The Nexus Between Environment, Economy, Policy and Sustainable Development—a Needed Global Systems Optimization to Stay Below 1.5 Degrees
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sustainability and Applications".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 442
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
As global temperatures rise, there is an ever increasing need for alignment between sectors in order to achieve GHG reductions on a global scale. As sectors are increasingly interconnected to provide food and fuel and increase standards of living, understanding how improvements in resource efficiency, the use of economic incentives, and the quantifiable impact of policy affect common goals is key. While carbon capture and storage (CCS) or utilization (CCU) are seen as promising means of abating a sector’s carbon footprint, it is imperative to ensure that they do not merely shift their own GHG emissions to other sectors, as can sometimes occur in CCU cases. Understanding the interconnection between sectors and potential environmental burden shifting is necessary. On the other hand, pressure on the food system for land to produce biofuels for various sectors may indeed lead to increasing GHG emissions from land use changes, as well us unintended consequences for the health of local communities, biodiversity and food prices. Quantifying the impacts of future pathways that may lead us to stay within 1.5 degrees may help governments in choosing the right policy interventions, and as such, it is equally important to understand whether current interventions take us on the right pathway. Therefore, we invite papers that achieve the following:
- The quantification of the environmental impacts of proposed regional policies with LCA or the like, with special attention to GHG emissions shifting between sectors and burden shifting of environmental impacts. The following are example studies:
- Studies that examine the overall impact of globally scaled carbon capture and utilization strategies (incl. CCS) related to the marine or aviation sectors’ use of fossil CO2 captured from industry, e.g., cement or power plants, for fuel production and combustion.
- Studies that examine global strategies for the energy sector, e.g., switching to a share of electrification, biofuels, and synthetic fuels (incl. aviation and marine sectors).
- The examination of the interplay between food and energy systems in a quantitative way with special attention to biomass-based energy and the land system.
- The examination of the environmental and social impacts of current and future economic strategies to reach decarbonization or broader sustainability goals, such as incentives, taxes and the like, with LCA or similar.
- The assessment of the environmental impacts of future transportation or energy systems by integrating LCA and shared socio-economic pathways.
- The proposal of actionable recommendations to policymakers and stakeholders in the transportation sector for solving energy-related issues with consideration for cross-sectoral interactions and competition for resources.
Dr. Giovanna Croxatto Vega
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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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
- shared socioeconomic pathways
- biofuels
- land use change
- burden shifting
- LCA
- sustainability
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