Discover Sustainability

Seychelles is among four countries in the African continent with 100% access to electricity, of which over 90% of the energy is generated from fossil fuels. The energy transition is a crucial enabler of sustainable development and climate resilience. Therefore, this study seeks to understand the determinants of solar PV uptake based on a stratified random sample of 130 households on Mahe Island, Seychelles. We applied logistic regression and descriptive statistics to analyze the driving factors of a household decision regarding the adoption of a solar PV system. Results indicated that access to credit and monthly household income influenced the adoption of solar PV systems at the 1% significance level. Independent variables such as gender, age, and education of household heads, including family size that were significant in other studies, were not significant in the current study. Cost-saving (100%), energy security (91.7%), and environmentally friendly perceptions (76.7%), and access to loans (56.7%), were chief among the motivational drivers of the 60 households that had adopted solar PV systems. Whereas, for the non-adopters, the four most essential barriers cited were cheap electricity (82.9%), high initial cost (65.7%), existing loans (52.9%), and long payback time (40.0%). For the communal approach to solar PV systems in Seychelles to be successful, the adoption barriers that occur at the level of households should be considered.

The livestock sector has had an important contribution to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In Costa Rica, more than 20% of emissions come from beef and milk production. This paper performs a cost–benefit analysis of a climate policy in the Costa Rican cattle sector, and tries to innovate by including the positive global externality of emissions reduction into the analysis; to assess the extent to which it affects the attractivity of the referred policy. National sectorial policies for climate change mitigation generate global benefits, such as avoided GHG emissions into the atmosphere—a global public good. However, such global positive externalities, which represented 13% to 31% of the policy’s benefits in the widest scenario of our study, are usually not included in national climate planning, which may lead efficient policies to be dismissed. This paper shows that taking externalities into account makes sectorial climate mitigation policies more efficient, i.e., more appealing for investments. Benefit–cost ratios varied between 0.27 and 7.31 and break-even points average around the third and fourth years. Moreover, the results under different economic assumptions varied in terms of net benefits, but viability balance (viable vs. unviable scenarios) remained stable for different settings. The crucial question remains on how to best balance such global positive externalities to be advantageous to both funders and beneficiaries, enabling an efficient global climate mitigation strategy.

This research paper is composed of several interrelated sections that present thought-provoking concepts and debates concerning sustainability. Substantially, it argues the failure of the classical definition of sustainability and underlines serious worldwide challenges that face the planet and mankind due to the questionable current modes of development. Understanding the importance of adopting more comprehensive definition that ensures integrating critical missing aspects; mainly the cultural-historical and temporal analysis, as well as, rethinking the approach when applying that concept is more urgent than ever. In this sense, the author theorizes new ground-breaking definition for sustainability; namely the four dimensional spatial sustainability, and so, develops innovative approaches that effectively facilitate adopting a set of philosophical models pertaining to this revolutionary definition on different temporal scales. The social aspect has far-reaching impacts upon the different models, hence it is considered as chief factor that democratically supports, controls and enhances the other dimensions, i.e. economic, environmental, and cultural-historical. Basically, these models catalyze generating socially-driven synergy that fosters change in key systems, and creates therefore, spatial participative sustainability leading, on the long run, to standardized spatial sustainability featuring what the author calls ‘utopian sustainability’ on global scale.

The wine industry has evolved thanks to the introduction of digital technologies in every aspect of the wine production chain and the emerging need of the food industry for qualitative, sustainable, and safe products. As a result, the incorporation of digital services that facilitate access to related data of wine products is crucial for wine enterprises to increase their competitiveness, customer loyalty, and market share in this highly competitive domain. In this work, we present the Message-in-a-Bottle (MiB) ecosystem, which exploits multi-dimensional and multi-sourced data for creating engaging and interactive stories around wine labels. We especially focus on the sustainability and safety issues in the wine industry and showcase how MiB addresses them. The ecosystem is developed in the context of the MiB project and has already started to be available in the market through the Lyrarakis wine enterprise.

Agroforestry plays a pivotal role in mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and addressing the challenges posed by climate change. While carbon sequestration efforts have primarily centred on forests, it is imperative to acknowledge the contribution that non-forest ecosystems, such as agroforestry, can offer. This study investigated the influence of agroforestry systems on the variation of biomass carbon stocks in the Sahelo-Sudanian and Sudanian regions of the Senegalese Groundnut basin. Three primary agroforestry systems were studied: silvopastoral, agrisilvicultural, and agrosilvopastoral. Forty-six (46) 100 m × 100 m plots were sampled, within which 1 × 1 m² subplots were used to sample understory biomass across three agroforestry systems in the two climatic zones. Analysis of variance was performed to assess the influence of agroforestry systems and climatic zones on biomass carbon stocks. The findings showed that in the Sahelo-Sudanian region, the agrisilvicultural system exhibited the highest AGC + BGC stocks, averaging 43.42 ± 21.61 tCha⁻¹. In contrast, the silvopastoral system showed significantly higher AGC + BGC stocks, which amounted to 36.33 ± 12.27 tCha⁻¹ in the Sudanian region. On the other hand, understory carbon stocks were significantly higher (p < 0.01) in the agrisilvicultural and agrosilvopastoral systems than in the silvopastoral system in both climatic zones. Agroforestry systems had a significant effect on AGC + BGC stocks within climatic zones. Nevertheless, the effect was less pronounced when comparing across climatic regions. These results underscore the importance of specific land management practices interacting with local climatic conditions to influence AGC + BGC stocks. Therefore, policy makers should carefully consider the interaction of these factors when implementing carbon management practices and planning mitigation strategies in West Africa.

Electronic waste is the fastest-growing domestic waste stream globally, continuously outstripping projections. With increasing ubiquity of complex computing, many non-renewables are contained in end-of-life electronics, creating a vast urban mine, potentially hazardous, depending on treatment. The aim of this study is to compare how Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy is applied in two case countries, Japan and Canada, the practical implications of EPR policy design on producer operations, and how EPR affects electronic waste management improvements in each case. These cases share international obligations for electronic waste management but employ contrasting EPR policies. These policies are widespread in both cases, yet are not presided over by larger, regional obligations. Therefore, country-level interviews with electronic waste management stakeholders focusing on how EPR regulation affects producer practice were conducted. The physical application of EPR, as seen in Japan, drives design changes by producers intending to simplify downstream treatment, while financial responsibility in Canada, creates greater concern with cost-savings for producers, complicating end-of-life processing. EPR implementation, along with specific geographical factors, also create contrasting resource recovery results between countries. Regulation primarily drives EPR implementation in both countries, which is consistent with the literature. This study presents new drivers and barriers, namely pre-emptive legislation, and no incentive to improve, classifying the Japanese and Canadian systems as suffering from externalities on an insular system, and lack of harmonization, respectively. This research addresses a gap in comparative studies across regions of physical and financial EPR effects on producer practice.