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Ports and port cities play a pivotal role toward the sustainable development of coastal ecosystems. These ecosystems provide their natural capital by offering favorable locations for industry and accessibility to world markets. While port industrial activities have been reactive to pressure from stakeholders, in more recent years ports have adapted inclusive strategies and seek to align their strategic intentions with stakeholders. Around the world, port authorities are aligning their ambitions toward their contribution to the sustainable development goals (SDGs), such as the World Port Sustainability Program (WPSP) for port authorities and AIVP2030 for port cities. The aim of this chapter is to assess to what extent ports have contributed to the implementation of the SDGs. The analysis is based on a content analysis on a portfolio of 212 projects in which port authorities demonstrate leadership in sustainable development. The results indicate that the contributions of port and port city authorities are generally motivated to “do no harm.” Port authorities also have “do good” intentions for their ecosystems, which are mainly focused on reenforcing connections with communities and less to restore their impact on the biosphere. Furthermore, the findings show that linkages between WPSP projects with the SDGs are rather ambiguous. Directions are given toward a methodology for port authorities (PAs) to establish a stronger link between (monitoring) business strategies with the implementation of inclusive port development strategies to prevent using SDG reporting for greenwashing purposes.

I examine patterns of making or deferring strategic repatriations that firms can use to either meet analysts' forecasts or defer to maintain future reported earnings flexibility. First, I examine the extent to which firms repatriate earnings from high foreign tax subsidiaries to decrease US tax expense, resulting in increased net income and lower cash taxes. Using federal tax return information, I find evidence that firms strategically repatriate these earnings to meet or beat current analysts' forecasts. Next, I find evidence that firms that are able to obtain current year tax reductions defer these repatriations in an attempt to build cookie-jar reserves. Lastly, I find that firms do not disclose high foreign tax repatriations (HTRs), even when required by SEC rules. This study contributes to the earnings management, tax avoidance, and disclosure literature by examining a discretionary tax planning strategy.

Negative issues in the world have increased in recent years. The continuing COVID-19 pandemic has forced the global tourism industry to take precautions against these disasters to be ready to respond. Given tourism's vulnerability to environmental and social changes, the pandemic has dramatically impacted tourism worldwide. Tourism enterprises have developed various strategies and approaches to eliminate vulnerabilities that negatively affect their structures. This chapter tries to measure and recover plans implemented by various countries to increase the tourism industry's resilience in the face of crises and disasters.

Trafficking¹ in human beings is gross.² It constitutes one of the most egregious violations of human rights.³ The vile nature of human trafficking is also hinged on the fact that it commodifies human beings. Hence its categorisation is modern slavery.⁴ So much of trafficking activities follow the pathways5 of other transnational forms of organised crimes and irregular cross-border movement of people.6 In response to this egregious crime, several international, regional and country laws and instruments have been used or proposed for combatting human trafficking.7 These instruments forbid trafficking in human persons and provide several preventive measures, prosecution of perpetrators and protection of victims of human trafficking.8 The number of state parties to the United Nations Protocol to prevent suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (the Palermo Protocol), demonstrates the global commitment to combatting human trafficking. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on legal systems, and the capacity of both state and private institutions to combat human trafficking, has added a knotty twist to the global problem of human trafficking. This essay looks at the trends of human trafficking in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also highlights international law and policy approaches that state parties and civil society organisations should adopt to counteract the changes and sustain the fight against human trafficking. Thus, the essay contributes to updating the legal and policy approaches to combat human trafficking in this era.

The call for a new paradigm in politics and governance has become a planetary imperative. Humanity is at a critical juncture; unless we mature as a species and become net-positive to nature the human experiment may (soon) end. We have become our own biggest threat. This chapter explores the foundations, as well as systemic barriers, for the shift to a new and life-centred paradigm in politics and governance. Offering a systemic exploration of the root causes of our sustainability crises and how to address this, based on the cosmology and evolutionary principles of complex living systems. Applying Living Systems Protocols from the EARTHwise Constitution for a Planetary Civilization, and its framework of five Future Archetypes, for developing our transformative capacities to address the systemic thrivability barriers of mechanistic systems and worldviews. With case-study examples of new paradigm tools, systems and technologies that enable a decentralization of governance and democratization of ownership. As such empowering the systemic conditions and maturation pathways for a thriving planetary civilization. The chapter completes with a brief practice for developing our future human capacities and inner consciousness shifts for a new paradigm in politics and governance.

This chapter discusses the proposed integrated sustainable road infrastructure project implementation (ISRIPI) model and its constructs and sub-constructs, as well as public participation (PP), climate change response (CCR), and stakeholder management (SM). CEEQUAL was the most comprehensive rating system, with 11 criteria. Lim (2009) and Ugwu and Haupt (2007) were the most thorough studies examining sustainability models for infrastructure projects, focussing on social and cultural sustainability (SCS), economic sustainability (ES), environmental sustainability (EnS), institutional sustainability (IS), health and safety (HS), project management (PM), resource utilization and management (RUM), and engineering performance (EP). The Brundtland Report and Rio Summit defined social sustainability as the right to a decent standard of living, social justice between generations, within generations, and around the world. Thin (2002) showed social justice, unity, investment, and safety as aspects of society. Rosenström et al. (2006) defined social qualities as objects that make people happy. Cultural sustainability is access to cultural assets for current and future generations, and cultural legacy is the collection of physical signals passed on from the past to each civilization and, by extension, to all humans. EnS seeks to reduce the environmental impact of road infrastructure projects. Sustainable road infrastructure project implementation (SRIPI) must consider PM issues such as delivery system, risks, duration, performance assessment, sustainability clauses, and contract type. Quality control systems must be set up to ensure the optimum utilization and management of resources in SRIPI. EP criteria measure sustainable road infrastructure projects’ (SRIP) durability, quality, resilience, adaptability, functionality, carrying capacity, and robustness. This research developed an SRIPI model based on the models of CEEQUAL, Lim (2009), and Ugwu and Haupt (2007). The hypothesized framework consists of 37 SRIPI factors, including SCS, ES, IS, HS, PM, RUM, EP, CCR, PP, and SM. It projected the analytical authority of these constructs in the success of SRIPs to test whether the realization of SRIPI outcomes depends on the supposed indicators of the variables. SRIPI is a multidimensional structure composed of 11 latent variables, derived from literature review and Delphi study findings.

The aim of the study is to determine the benefits of transforming a destination into smart destination (SD) to restart tourism after the COVID-19 outbreak, to match the dimensions of SD with restarting strategies, and to make conceptual inferences to serve this. For this purpose, two reports published by the World Tourism Organization (WTO) in 2020 were examined: Priorities for Tourism Recovery and Global Guidelines to Restart Tourism. Then, the contents of these reports and the dimensions of SDs were matched and a guiding model for tourism decision-makers was developed.

Social enterprises (SEs), part of the third sector, are hybrid organizations combining the pursuit of social scopes with commercial business solutions. In seeking for social value, they pair for-profit and non-profit features, thereby compensating for shortcomings of both the public sector and the commercial market. Therefore, the performance management of such organizations assumes a crucial relevance. Among the available tools, the balanced scorecard (BSC) aims to capture performance multidimensionality, at the same time fostering legitimacy towards stakeholders.

In general terms, the BSC has the limit to follow a linear and static logic of construction and functioning. For this reason, scholars combine it with system dynamics (SD) to create dynamic balanced scorecards (DBSCs). However, literature seems to devote scarce attention to the adoption of such analytic tools in the third sector, particularly in SEs. This chapter wants to contribute to bridging this gap by proposing a tailored application in the context of a social cooperative, active in the clothing recycle and in the re-integration of disadvantaged social categories. By referring to previous literature about DBSC, two modelling strategies are identified: the BSC-driven and the SD-driven. The latter, based on inductive reasoning, is the one privileged for the study because of its wider flexibility. The modelling outputs consider different perspectives than the ones within traditional BSCs, contain elements of circular causality and show how financial and non-financial performances interplay and co-determine each other. Insights from the proposed model can be useful to support both decision-making and stakeholder engagement.

There have been various concerns about the petroleum industry regulation in Nigeria, including issues regarding the protection of host communities. The host communities have hardly derived sustainable developmental value from petroleum resource exploration from their community. Instead, the exploration of petroleum and other mineral resources has caused some environmental, social and economic setback for these host communities. On 17 August 2021, the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021 was signed into law after over two decades of legislative stalemate. The PIA proposes a series of reforms purported to revolutionalise the petroleum industry. According to President Buhari, the Act will create a regulatory sphere that will ensure transparency and accountability across the oil and gas value chain (Ailemen, 2021). Chapter 3 of the Act deals with host communities' concerns. Its overall aim is to ensure host communities have access to sustainable prosperity. The notion of sustainable prosperity implies that the Act seeks to elevate host communities from the poverty baseline to a level of prosperity that satisfies the social, economic, environmental and intergenerational features. Therefore, this chapter examines the provisions of the Act, particularly Chapter 3, to determine its potential to achieve sustainable prosperity for host communities. The chapter shall also identify the weaknesses in the Act, which would otherwise limit its sustainable prosperity goal and how these challenges can be addressed.

Pakistan is one of the most climate change and natural disaster-affected countries in the globe, where the lives and livelihoods of people are repeatedly affected due to these natural disasters. Over the past few decades, the country has been impacted by numerous devastating floods, droughts, and storms. As a result, households face enormous complications, particularly those dwelling in disaster-prone areas. Therefore, this study intends to explore the status of household vulnerability and resilience practices of hazard-prone communities in Pakistan from existing literature. This study has identified the 17 most relevant documents. It argues that household vulnerability is increasing consistently with the increasing rate of disaster intensity. Frequent flooding, landslide, erosion, and crop loss are the leading causes of household vulnerability. This study reveals five types of household vulnerability components which look into several livelihood vulnerability indicators of Pakistani households. Moreover, the study unfolds that the main causes of disaster vulnerability are widespread crop loss, a lack of water, loss of soil fertility, and low socioeconomic situations. The major vulnerability components of dwellers are exposure (increasing summer duration, the rapid increase of population house build-up in the riparian areas, and increasing occurrence of hailstorms), sensitivity, low access to education facilities, human loss, diseases infestation, food insecurity, and social conflict), and less adaptive capacity (social networks, migration, poor emergency services, multiple income sources, and less access to the health facility). To address the household vulnerability, this study has also identified four key aspects of resilience, like social resilience, economic resilience, institutional resilience, and physical resilience. The findings will effectively help to understand the dynamics of household vulnerability and resilience and its measurement and management strategy from developed indicators.