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The aim of this paper is to identify the factors that are responsible for the slow development of the renewable energy sector in the Pacific Island countries (PICs), and suggest ways of overcoming them.

The paper compares the energy situation in Australia and Germany to that in the PICs, and the state of energy development in the PICs to its African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) counterparts.

The paper finds that policy frameworks are important pre‐requisites to the development of renewable energy. In addition, the absence of a science and technology base in the PICs is a serious impediment to the development of the renewable energy sector in these countries. It is found that the PICs are lagging behind in policy frameworks and institutional capacity building requirements as compared to other ACP countries.

Policy frameworks must be established as an essential pre‐requisite to the development of renewable energy in the PICs. In addition, ways and means must be found to address the lack of proper attitudes amongst decision‐makers to the value of a science base in development.

The paper identifies the underlying impediments to the rapid development of the renewable energy sector in the PICs, and suggests what could contribute to the lack of an appropriate science base that is considered as a requirement to development.

The purpose of this paper is to review, from a sustainable management perspective, a range of conceptual frameworks; determine the efficacy and utility of three different data sources in generating indicators collectively; and consider the utility of a single index of total ecosystem services (TESI). The ecosystem service (ES) concept has been discussed as an important model to aid sustainable land-use management.

The historical development and the relative merits of sustainable management frameworks which can be implemented in a decision-making context were examined. The efficacy of a single index TESI was examined considering three data sources for 11 contrasting sites within the UK.

The choice of conceptual framework and data source depends on the specific question and scale being addressed. Publicly available data through the Eurostat route is primarily limited to the assessment of the provisioning services.

Limitation of the study is that both bottom-up and top-down sourcing of data to conduct an ES assessment were considered.

The scale of enquiry when conducting ES assessment to aid sustainable management dictate the most useful data source. If conducting local assessments that give local data is more appropriate while conducting European Union (EU)-wide assessment gives less local precision, it does provide some insight when conducting larger-scale regional assessment which cannot otherwise be achieved.

The various data set analysed in this study all provided insight for sustainable management.

The technological revolution is creating new goods and services and altering how and where they are produced. One of the principal issues for all countries is how these new technologies will affect employment and the composition of skills demand. Surveys the literature to attempt to answer three main questions: to what degree are the new technologies becoming diffused around the world? How much do they reduce, or increase employment? And do they reduce, or increase, the skills required in the labour force? Touches briefly on implications for educational policy. The survey suggests that because of new technologies, new organizations of production, changing employment conditions and the development of new sectors of production, the complementarity of general, formal schooling, in‐plant training and learning‐by‐doing to capital investment are increasing over time and that general schooling plus on‐the‐job training is more complementary to new technologies than is vocational schooling. The former combination is more likely to give workers the flexibility they need in such changing conditions.