Search results

The purpose of this paper is to review extant literature and to provide perspectives on approaches to enhancing built environment sustainability in Africa. There is a mismatch between global societal resources and the increasing demand for natural resources. The consequences of this mismatch are prevalent in many African countries, causing the need to implement of built environment sustainability as a matter of cause.

Little research has been undertaken to date with a focus on the environmental sustainability of Africa. With this in mind the review was undertaken through a series of incremental steps. It began with an initial review, before developing through exploratory and development phases. The process culminated with the refined literature review presented.

The paper finds that a different approach is required to achieve built sustainable development for developed and developing countries, with a clear difference in terms of its application observed between the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Current energy and water crisis facing Africa is brought to the fore and an evaluation is provided of the systems being used to ameliorate its effects. The study explores a range of technological solutions that are appropriate for consideration in the African context. It also examines the barriers that need to be overcome to facilitate the widespread use of the suggested solutions in Africa.

This study examines built environment sustainability through the Africa lens. It highlights its importance and the contextual factors inhibiting the widespread uptake of built environment sustainability solutions. The study offers a number of recommendations for the future to encourage long-term built environment sustainability in Africa and more specifically the Sub-Saharan region.

Purpose – This chapter responds to the re-centering of agriculture and food in official forums and public discourse in the current crisis context.

Design – It re-examines the assumptions of the agrarian question through the lens of food regime analysis.

Findings – By examining these developments, particularly the recommendations of the IAASTD report, it is clear there is growing interest in the multifunctional conception of farming that is attentive to ecological and social sustainability.

Research implications – This rethinking is symptomatic of a transformation of the agrarian question: moving away from a concern with the political trajectory of capital in agriculture and the process of depeasantization, towards a concern with ‘peasant’ renewal. This registers an ontological shift towards an agro-ecological paradigm in which an ecologically driven conception of ‘value’ addressing social reproduction rather than capital accumulation is emerging.

Practical implications – New research on “repeasantization” undergirds this claim, and complements the global mobilization of small farmers around the project of food sovereignty. Practically, food sovereignty projects mean growing land rights claims and adoption of diverse forms of biological (rather than chemical) farming.

Social implications – This implies stabilizing rural populations and the possibility of health food and environments.

Value – Intellectually, such developments call for an analytical shift (in food regime and other analyses) towards values other than those of price and productivism in assessing the contribution of agriculture to human survival in a climate-challenged future.

The chapter investigates the relationship between environmental management practices (EMPs) and financial performance (FP).

The study is based on a sample of 187 SMEs and uses data on six EMPs (energy, water, waste, material, emissions, and biodiversity) collected through a self-administered questionnaire from owner-managers of SMEs. Ordinary least squares regression is employed to model the hypothesized paths.

The results suggest a positive and significant relationship between EMPs (energy, water, and material) and FP. There is also a significant positive relationship between an aggregate EMP measure and FP. However, other EMPs (waste, emissions, and biodiversity) are not significantly associated with FP. Overall, these results provide empirical support to the mostly normative suggestion that the conflicting results on the environmental management and financial performance relationship are partly due to the EMP measure used.

The study is based on cross-sectional data, and therefore, it is impossible to determine any changes over time. Longitudinal studies could help confirm the relationship between EMP and FP over a longer period. From a policy perspective, this results mean that the Ghanaian EPA must monitor more closely for violations of laws and regulations relating to waste, emissions, and biodiversity since SMEs do not have incentives to manage these impacts without commensurate return.

The study contributes by documenting evidence of the relationship between multiple measures of EMP and FP. This unlike most existing studies has enabled us to report evidence of how each EMP measure affects FP differently and where win–win opportunities are for SMEs. Thus, the win–win opportunities are associated with some EMP measures but not all.

The turbulent phase of COVID-19 has caused uncertainty as governments fail to develop coherent strategies for cutting emissions and are struggling to match the rhetoric of sustainable activities with actions (Barbier & Burgess, 2020; Cawthorn, Kennaugh, & Ferreira, 2021). In the recent past, firms have failed in their plans to decarbonise their key sectors such as the retail sector in the United Kingdom So far, retailers' commitment to achieving net zero emissions has been an important pledge but delivery is nowhere closer to their promises (Henriques, 2020). The firms' climate targets are not going to be met by magic as serious action is needed to fulfil the promises.

Fossil fuels have led to a drastic increase in carbon emissions in the world over the last decade. Firms championing cleaner energy and low carbon technologies are needed to cut emissions. Renewable energy sources such as wind energy can help reducing the dependency of fossil fuels (Boretti, 2020; Ebhota & Jen, 2020). Wind is an indirect form of solar energy which can provide environment-friendly option in uncertain times and can provide long-term sustainability of global economy. Solar energy technologies have the potential to decrease climate change through energy-related emissions (Li, Dai, & Cui, 2020). Increasing energy demand has initiated a focus on using hydrogen from water as a substitute for oil and fossil fuels (Boretti, 2020).

The first part of the chapter discusses theoretical perspectives of sustainable development and environmental performance with regards to three main issues: energy, water and carbon emissions, whereas the later part highlights the importance of solar technology as a low-polluted alternative to fossil fuels in the retail sector. Sustainable development of energy, water and environmental precautions such as reducing carbon emissions are of interest to wider branches of industries including retail, energy and water sector, governmental policymakers, researchers, educators and society. The purpose of this chapter is to increase the debate of the key issues of sustainable development regarding environment, energy and water in the modern times.

This paper is concerned to show how the Danish political elite interpreted and responded to the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis for the Danish economy. In particular, the paper describes how this interpretive construction focused primarily on three features of the Danish context to the exclusion of other perspectives; the first was an emphasis on the problems of the financial sector, of interest rates and state finances; the second was that Danish productivity increases were falling behind other comparable countries and part of the solution required new strategies towards labour and unemployment benefits; thirdly, the adverse effects of the crisis were causing an increase in government expenditure and a decline in government revenues which was rapidly becoming unsustainable. As a consequence, the Danish elite fell into the broader interpretation of the crisis embedded in the dominant view within the EU institutions as well as among the international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, that a period of austerity and fiscal consolidation was the required remedy, even though this was likely to be pro-cyclical in its effects. However, the paper shows that alternative data which is more reflective of Denmark’s position in the global economy and the trajectory and form of its growth over the last decade reveals that the interpretation of the Danish elite has been too narrow and neglects the distinctive roots of Denmark’s competitive strengths. Indeed, by responding in the way which they have, the Danish elite is in danger of undermining the very conditions of Denmark’s competitiveness.

This paper aims to examine the role numbers play in corporate environmental reporting. To deeply examine the ontological meanings of enumeration in the context of nature, the histories of number and accounting are explored. Some key tropes emerge from these histories, namely, distancing and control.

To explore some of the implications of quantifying nature, three years of environmental reports of ten companies from the ASX200 are analysed through a Barthsian lens. Examples of enumerating nature are highlighted and explored in terms of what this means for the corporate relationship with nature. This study has focussed on some specific aspects of nature that are commonly counted in corporate environmental reporting: carbon, energy, water, biodiversity and waste. This study explores how monetisation and obfuscation are used and how this informs the myth that nature is controllable.

This study finds that quantifying nature constructs a metaphorical distance between the company and the natural world which erodes the sense of connection associated with an authentic care for nature. These findings are critical in light of the detrimental impact of corporate activity on the natural world. The reports themselves, while promoted as a tool to help mitigate damage to the natural environment, are implicitly perpetuating its harm.

Given the extent to which companies are responsible for environmental damage and the potential capacity embedded in corporate communications, better understanding the implications of quantifying nature could powerfully instigate a new but necessary approach to nature.

The insights of this paper are relevant to those aiming to improve the underpinning approaches used in corporate environmental reporting. This paper provides new understandings of the ways quantitative expression of environmental values constructs the myth that nature is controllable.

Constant change in current market and social conditions has triggered the demand for a more adaptable building stock. The capacity to assume and accommodate change has thus become a new requirement for buildings. At the same time, there is a growing demand for more environmentally conscious buildings. New protocols, building codes, and certification systems are becoming stricter regarding buildings’ CO2 emissions, energy efficiency, and other environmental aspects. The current building industry fails to satisfy these two demands; conventional buildings rarely enable change, unless undergoing complex renovations, and rarely consider environmental features beyond mandatory legislation. In this context, this paper proposes Modular Ecotechnological Architecture as a response to both demands. The basis is an integrated design that looks at energy, water, and materials’ efficiency altogether, combined with a modular industrialized building system. The system allows buildings to grow or reduce in size according to their needs, with little impact for their inhabitants, enabling versatility for a variety of uses within the same space and over time. This paper presents the concept of this new building system together with the technical, building code-related, and economic challenges encountered throughout recent experimental projects.