Search Results (1,486)

There is increasing concern in many advanced economies about the risks of disruption and crises in agri-food systems. Government departments and non-governmental organisations are working to identify and understand specific risks but struggle to take broad, holistic perspectives and therefore underestimate the potential for civil unrest. In the interests of helping move from understanding to action, we convened a group of experts through a Delphi process to map out potential pathways to acute UK food system crises and identify interventions that would build resilience and sustainability. To this end, we consulted 31 experts, carrying out 15 expert interviews, followed by three surveys and two workshops with a further 16 experts. The experts highlighted the many existing chronic issues creating a tinderbox for an acute risk to lead to a food crisis in the UK. These chronic issues include climate change, poor policy implementation, rising inequality, food supply chain consolidation and the risks from just-in-time supply of food. They voted to include three acute triggers—(a) cyber-attack, (b) a major extreme weather event and (c) a major new international conflict—and described how any combination of these could lead to (d) a UK food availability and/or price shock that could result in widespread fear of unsafe or inadequate food, leading to violence. A total of 7 system-wide interventions were prioritised to help address these pathway elements together and build sustainability, and a further 21 were identified to address elements individually. Full article

Background/Objectives: Every country and territory worldwide is affected by varying degrees of under- and overconsumption of food. A substantial share of the economic burden of unsustainable malnutrition arises from diet-related health impacts, although existing research has largely focused on environmental consequences. Methods: This study addresses this gap by combining cost-of-illness (COI) and True Cost Accounting (TCA) approaches, as well as Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data, to estimate external diet-induced health costs. A comprehensive database covering 204 countries and territories is established, quantifying health costs by disease category and dietary risk factor. Results: The results indicate that USD 1719.94 billion in annual global health costs are attributable to poor diets. This corresponds to an average burden of USD 211.08 per capita per year. Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) constitute the largest share of costs, followed by diabetes mellitus (DM). In absolute and per capita terms, the United States contributes disproportionately. Regionally, North America bears 44.36% of the global monetary burden, while Oceania accounts for only 1.22%. The highest per-capita costs occur in North America, Europe, and Oceania. The most influential dietary risk factors are the overconsumption of processed and red meat, and the underconsumption of whole grains. A strong positive correlation is observed between diet-related health costs and national prosperity levels. Conclusions: This framework represents a novel approach to standardized and holistic valuation, providing a robust basis for deriving policy-relevant insights to inform sustainable nutrition strategies and advance the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially the second SDG, zero hunger. Full article

The growing demand for sustainable energy alternatives highlights the need for decision support tools in biodiesel supply chains. This study proposes a mixed-integer programming (MIP) model for tactical planning in the palm oil biodiesel supply chain, focusing on refining, blending, and distribution. The model incorporates economies of scale, inventory, and transport constraints and is enhanced with valid inequalities (VI) and a warm-start heuristic procedure (WS) to improve computational efficiency. Computational experiments on simulated instances with up to 6273 variables and 47 million iterations demonstrated robust performance, achieving solutions within 15 min. The model also reduced time-to-first-feasible (TTFF) solutions by 60–75% and CPU times by 17–21% compared to the baseline, confirming its applicability in realistic contexts. The proposed model provides actionable insights for managers by supporting decisions on facility scaling, product allocation, and profitability under supply–demand constraints. Beyond palm oil biodiesel, the formulation and its VI + WS enhancement provide a transferable blueprint for tactical planning in other process industry and renewable energy supply chains, where (i) multi-echelon flow conservation holds and (ii) discrete operating scales couple throughput with fixed/variable cost structures, enabling fast scenario analyses under changing prices, demand, and capacities. Full article

Vehicular emissions are a major contributor to air pollution and respiratory morbidity in Ecuador’s urban centers. Despite increasing evidence of traffic-related health impacts, national research remains fragmented and unevenly distributed. This narrative review synthesizes 26 peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2024 to characterize vehicular air pollution sources, pollutants, and respiratory health effects in Ecuador. The evidence shows a strong geographic concentration, with more than half of the studies conducted in Quito, followed by Guayaquil and Cuenca. National inventories indicate that the transport sector accounts for approximately 41.7% of Ecuador’s CO₂ emissions. Across cities, PM_2.5, PM₁₀, NO₂, CO, and SO₂ were the most frequently assessed pollutants and were repeatedly reported to approach or exceed international guideline values, particularly during traffic peaks and under low-dispersion conditions. Health-related studies documented substantial impacts, including up to 19,966 respiratory hospitalizations in Quito, with short-term PM_2.5 exposure associated with increased hospitalization risk in children. Among schoolchildren attending high-traffic schools, carboxyhemoglobin levels above 2.5% were linked to a threefold increase in the risk of acute respiratory infections. Occupationally exposed adults, such as drivers, traffic police officers, and outdoor workers with regular exposure to traffic-related air pollution, also showed a higher prevalence of chronic respiratory symptoms. Environmental evidence further highlighted the accumulation of traffic-related heavy metals (Zn, Cu, Pb, Cr) and pronounced spatial inequalities affecting low-income neighborhoods. Overall, the review identifies aging vehicle fleets and diesel-based transport as dominant contributors to observed pollution and health patterns, while underscoring methodological limitations such as the scarcity of longitudinal studies and uneven monitoring coverage. These findings provide integrated and policy-relevant evidence to support sustainable urban planning, cleaner transport strategies, and targeted respiratory health policies in Ecuador. Full article

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) and digitalization in contemporary education has intensified global debates on sustainable education, frequently framed around efficiency, personalization, and technological innovation. At the same time, these developments have accelerated processes of technologization and commodification, raising concerns about the erosion of educational values and human-centered purposes. This tension calls for a critical reassessment of what sustainability should mean in AI-mediated educational contexts. The objective of this study is to examine under what conditions AI contributes to sustainable education as a value-based and human-centered project, and under what conditions it undermines it. Methodologically, the article adopts a qualitative, value-critical analysis of contemporary scholarly literature and policy-oriented debates, employing the distinction between sustainable education, sustainability in education, and education for sustainable development as a heuristic entry point within a broader theoretical dialogue. The analysis demonstrates that AI does not exert a uniform or inherently progressive influence on education. While AI can enhance access, personalization, and instructional support in ethically grounded and well-governed contexts, it may also intensify educational inequalities, reinforce the commodification of knowledge, weaken academic integrity, and marginalize the formative and human dimensions of education under market-driven and weakly regulated conditions. These dynamics are particularly visible in culturally and religiously grounded educational contexts, where AI reshapes epistemic authority and educational meaning. The study concludes that achieving sustainable education in the digital age depends not on AI adoption per se, but on subordinating AI and digitalization to coherent normative, ethical, and governance frameworks that prioritize educational purpose, social justice, and human dignity. Full article

Malaria continues to impose a devastating disease burden globally despite control efforts spanning decades. Its elimination has been hindered by parasite and vector complexity and emerging drug and insecticide resistance, along with unremitting barriers to uptake of preventative strategies largely driven by social inequities, cost constraints, and logistical challenges in implementation. This review synthesises current and emerging prevention strategies, including vector control, chemoprevention and immunoprophylaxis. Insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying remain cornerstones of vector control, although their effectiveness is increasingly compromised by widespread insecticide resistance. Chemoprevention, including intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy and seasonal malaria chemoprevention in children, has proven highly efficacious, yet uptake remains below WHO targets and concerns about drug resistance remain. Recent advances in vaccines, notably RTS,S/AS01 and R21/Matrix-M, represent landmark achievements, with large-scale rollouts demonstrating reductions in severe disease and mortality. Novel approaches, such as monoclonal antibodies and genetically modified mosquitoes, offer promising avenues for future prevention. However, challenges remain in ensuring equitable access, sustaining efficacy in the face of evolving parasite and vector biology, and integrating interventions into diverse health systems. This review highlights the need for adaptive, multifaceted approaches to achieve malaria elimination goals. Full article

This study examines the economic, social, and spatial dynamics of the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions (MICE) sector in the Regional Unit of Thessaloniki, Greece, over the period 2011–2022. It explores how MICE activity is distributed across the Thessaloniki metropolitan region and whether municipal districts differ significantly in economic performance, employment, and specialization. Using data from the Hellenic Statistical Authority’s Business Register, the analysis considers enterprise turnover, employment, productivity, and spatial specialization, measured through Location Quotients (Ls). Nonparametric statistical tests (Spearman’s rho, Kruskal–Wallis, and Mann–Whitney U) are used to examine relationships among indicators and to identify spatial disparities between districts. The results point to a strongly polarized pattern: turnover and employment are concentrated in the Thessaloniki District, whereas peripheral districts show limited involvement in MICE-related activity. These findings suggest that the sector supports metropolitan growth but can also reinforce spatial and social inequalities. The study highlights the need for balanced regional planning and inclusive strategies that strengthen the resilience and long-term sustainability of urban MICE economies. Full article

Sustainable development is a global priority, essential for meeting the social, economic, and environmental needs of future generations. Governments worldwide have undertaken extensive research efforts to identify effective pathways for achieving sustainable development. In 2017, the financial sector contributed 15% of the global GDP. Given the central role of financial systems in both national and global economies, their integration into sustainability initiatives is essential. The United Nations Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development highlights the importance of financial inclusion in addressing economic disparities, particularly in rural African areas where a significant portion of the population lives below the poverty line. This study examines the potential of Financial Technology (FinTech) to drive sustainable development in Nigeria, a country marked by high financial exclusion, wealth inequality, and poverty. Through textual analysis and semi-structured interviews, this research identifies three critical areas for investment to enhance the adoption of FinTech and promote sustainable growth: financial and educational literacy, an enabling environment with supportive policies, and robust regulatory measures to protect end-users. These initiatives are essential for building confidence and fostering greater adoption of FinTech in Nigeria. Full article

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises large productivity gains, yet growing concern surrounds its implications for social sustainability. This paper develops and empirically evaluates a simple behavioral framework in which unequal access to AI generates mutually reinforcing gaps in economic performance and social visibility, potentially undermining the long-run stability of social systems. Individuals fall into two groups—AI adopters and non-adopters—and differences in productivity and social recognition give rise to two exchange rates: an Economic Exchange Rate (EER), capturing relative economic advantage, and a Social Exchange Rate (SER), capturing relative social visibility and recognition. AI strengthens the feedback between economic success and social standing, and the joint evolution of EER and SER is stable only when the product of two feedback parameters lies below unity. When this threshold is approached, the system enters a regime of systemic disequilibrium, in which economic and social disparities expand endogenously. Using panel data for 30 economies over the period 2012–2025, we provide empirical evidence of strong mutual reinforcement between economic and social advantage, with feedback strength rising as AI diffusion accelerates. The findings suggest that unequal AI access poses risks not only to equality but to social sustainability itself. The paper contributes a diagnostic framework for socially sustainable AI diffusion, highlighting the need for policies that dampen amplification mechanisms and strengthen inclusive pathways from economic performance to social recognition. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored and intensified existing structural inequalities, particularly in urban centers of the Global South. This paper revisits the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF), originally designed for rural contexts, proposing its adaptation to centralize mobility as a critical analytical axis in urban contexts. Through an examination of São Paulo, Brazil, we explore how mobility restrictions, access to natural capital, and health outcomes intersected during the pandemic, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations. To explore the application of the adapted framework, we analyze two contrasting neighborhoods in São Paulo, highlighting how different urban contexts mediate the impacts of systemic crises. By integrating mobility into the SLF, we aim to provide a more nuanced tool for analyzing and addressing urban vulnerabilities in times of systemic crises. Full article

With the continuous expansion of high-density urban forms, residents’ opportunities for daily contact with natural environments have been increasingly reduced, making the equity of urban green space allocation a critical challenge for sustainable urban development. Existing studies have largely focused on green space quantity or accessibility at single time points, lacking systematic investigations into the spatiotemporal evolution of green space exposure (GSE) and its equity from the perspective of residents’ actual environmental experiences. GSE refers to the integrated level of residents’ contact with urban green spaces during daily activities across multiple dimensions, including visual exposure, physical accessibility, and spatial distribution, emphasizing the relationship between green space provision and lived environmental experience. Based on this framework, this study takes the central urban area of Hangzhou as the study area and integrates multi-temporal remote sensing imagery with large-scale street view data. A deep learning–based approach is developed to identify green space exposure, combined with spatial statistical methods and equity measurement models to systematically analyze the spatiotemporal patterns and evolution of GSE and its equity from 2013 to 2023. The results show that (1) GSE in Hangzhou increased significantly over the study period, with accessibility exhibiting the most pronounced improvement. However, these improvements were mainly concentrated in peripheral areas, while changes in the urban core remained relatively limited, revealing clear spatial heterogeneity. (2) Although overall GSE equity showed a gradual improvement, pronounced mismatches between low exposure and high demand persisted in densely populated areas, particularly in older urban districts and parts of newly developed residential areas. (3) The spatial patterns and evolutionary trajectories of equity varied significantly across different GSE dimensions. Composite inequity characterized by “low visibility–low accessibility” formed stable clusters within the urban core. This study further explores the mechanisms underlying green space exposure inequity from the perspectives of urban renewal patterns, land-use intensity, and population concentration. By constructing a multi-dimensional and temporally explicit analytical framework for assessing GSE equity, this research provides empirical evidence and decision-making references for refined green space management and inclusive, sustainable urban planning in high-density cities. Full article

Digitalization is widely heralded as a catalyst for growth, yet its role in achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 10 (Reduced Inequalities) remains deeply contested. Moving beyond linear assumptions of “digital dividends,” this study adopts a complex socio-technical systems perspective to unravel the configurational pathways linking digitalization to national income inequality. We analyze a high-quality balanced panel of 56 major economies from 2012 to 2022. Employing Panel Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (Panel fsQCA) and Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA), this study proposes an evidence-based typology of digitalization-inequality pathways. We reveal that the impact of digital transformation is asymmetric and contingent on geo-economic contexts. NCA identifies Digital Infrastructure, Innovation, and Governance as necessary “bottlenecks” for social equity. Sufficiency analysis uncovers three distinct sustainable development modes: an “Open Innovation Mode” in affluent small economies, driven by global integration and technological frontiers; a “Governance-Regulated Industry Mode” in major economies, where strong state capacity regulates digital industrial scale; and an “Open Niche Mode” for transition economies, leveraging openness to bypass domestic structural deficits. Conversely, we identify a critical “Hollow Governance Trap” in the Global South, where digital governance efforts fail to reduce inequality in the absence of real industrial and infrastructural foundations. These findings challenge one-size-fits-all policies, suggesting that bridging the global digital divide requires context-specific strategies—ranging from synergistic integration to asymmetric breakthroughs—that align digital investments with institutional capacity. Full article

Improving agricultural productivity while reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a central challenge for sustainable development. Although recent studies suggest that emission intensity has declined in many countries, far less is known about how evenly such “decoupling” has occurred across the world. This study examines global patterns of agricultural productivity growth and greenhouse gas emission intensity from an inequality perspective. Using harmonized cross-country data from the World Bank and Our World in Data covering up to 175 countries over the period 1990–2020, we analyze country-level decoupling patterns and quantify inequality in agricultural emission intensity using the Theil index. Total inequality is further decomposed into between- and within-income-group components to assess the sources of global disparities. The results yield three main findings. First, although many countries have achieved productivity growth alongside declining emission intensity, decoupling outcomes are highly heterogeneous, even among countries at similar income levels. Second, global inequality in agricultural emission intensity remains persistently high and exhibits substantial fluctuations over time, with no clear evidence of long-run convergence. Third, decomposition results show that approximately 99% of total inequality is driven by disparities within income groups rather than differences between them. These findings challenge income-based narratives of sustainable agricultural transitions and highlight the central role of country-specific factors, institutional capacity, and technological diffusion in shaping environmental performance in agriculture. Full article

Background: International policy increasingly recognises the importance of inclusive, community-based support for people living with dementia. Football, as a culturally significant sport, has the potential to reach older adults and communities disproportionately affected by health inequalities. The objectives of this review were to collate evidence on football-based dementia initiatives, including intervention format, delivery approaches, and reported outcomes. Methods: Seven databases (Sportdiscus, MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, PsycINFO, CINAHL, and Web of Science) were searched for relevant peer-reviewed and grey literature from their inception to June 2025. The PICO framework was used to define eligibility criteria. Eligible studies described community-based football-themed or football-based programmes involving people living with dementia. Data were extracted on participant sample, intervention characteristics, and reported outcomes, and iteratively charted. Results: In total, 11 of the 1059 identified articles were included within this review. Initiatives were often delivered through professional football clubs and charitable foundations, with formats ranging from reminiscence therapy sessions to walking football. Common outcomes for participants included increased sociability, improved mood, enhanced communication, and a strengthened sense of identity and belonging. Some interventions also reported physical benefits, such as improved mobility. Carers highlighted respite opportunities, peer support, and enjoyment from seeing relatives more engaged. Despite positive reports, outcome measurement was inconsistent, and most studies were small-scale or descriptive pilot projects. Conclusions: Football-based dementia initiatives provide meaningful, culturally grounded opportunities for social inclusion and support. Their delivery through community clubs/organisations positions them well to address inequities in dementia care, particularly in areas of disadvantage. However, stronger evaluation methods are required to build a robust evidence base and guide sustainable implementation at scale. Full article

Transgender and gender-expansive (TGE) communities face persistent health inequities that are reproduced through everyday administrative and clinical encounters across care systems. A feedback-focused lens can clarify how those inequities are generated and sustained. Objective: To identify and validate feedback loops that create policy exposure and institutional gatekeeping in TGE healthcare and to surface leverage points to stabilize their continuity of care. Methods: Two facilitated, Zoom-based Group Model Building (GMB) sessions were conducted in March 2021 with eight TGE participants (mean age 38 years; range 22–63; transfeminine and transmasculine identities; multiracial, White, and SWANA racial identities) recruited through a Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community center, followed by a participant member-checking session to validate loop structure, causal direction, and interpretive accuracy. Analysis focused explicitly on identifying reinforcing and balancing feedback structures, rather than isolated barriers, to explain how policy exposure and institutional gatekeeping are generated over time. Results: Participants co-constructed a nine-variable Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) with six feedback structures, four reinforcing and two balancing that interact dynamically to amplify or dampen policy exposure, institutional gatekeeping, and continuity of care, which were organized across structural, institutional/clinical, and individual/community tiers. Reinforcing dynamics linked structural stigma, exclusion from formal employment, institutionalized provider bias, and enacted stigma to degraded care experience, increased trauma and distrust, and disrupted continuity, manifesting as policy exposure (e.g., coverage volatility, denials) and gatekeeping (e.g., discretionary documentation, referral hurdles). Community-based supports and peer/elder navigation functioned as balancing loops that reduced trauma, improved continuity and encounters, and, over time, dampened provider bias. A salient theme was the visibility/invisibility paradox: symbolic inclusion without workflow redesign can inadvertently increase exposure and reinforce harmful loops. Full article