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This paper aims to evaluate the progress made in achieving sustainable development goal-2 (SDG 2) in India, with a focus on ending hunger, ensuring food security, improving nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture. The assessment uses data from SDG Index reports, which offer a comprehensive overview of the advancements made by 28 states and 8 union territories (UTs) in India.

The evaluation is based on information derived from three editions of the SDG Index reports, initially published in 2018 and subsequently in 2019 and 2020. These reports provide a detailed analysis of the status and achievements of different states and UTs in relation to SDG 2. The categorization of states and UTs into aspirant, performer, front runner and achiever categories serves as a crucial framework for assessing the progress.

Despite concerted efforts by India, the majority of states and UTs are positioned in the aspirant and performer categories, suggesting that significant challenges persist in achieving SDG 2 targets. The results emphasize the necessity for stronger measures to elevate states and UTs to the categories of front-runners and achievers. The persistent challenges of malnutrition, hunger and their economic ramifications require immediate and strategic interventions to address these pressing concerns.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by providing a comprehensive analysis of the progress towards SDG 2 in India, using the insights from the SDG Index reports. The categorization framework used in this assessment offers a nuanced understanding of the challenges faced by different regions, highlighting the original contribution of this study. The findings underscore the urgency of targeted efforts to address malnutrition, hunger and related issues, emphasizing the importance of sustained commitment to achieving SDG 2 for the overall well-being of vulnerable populations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges, interplay and potential directions for future service research to address the first three Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of no poverty, zero hunger and good health and well-being.

This commentary examines how service research has addressed these SDGs in the literature, and through the development of a theory of change, the authors propose an agenda for service research going beyond serving, to enabling and transforming service systems, expanding the current focus on individual to community and population well-being through promotion and prevention.

Service research has increasingly advocated human-centered approaches but requires a shift towards an all of humanity perspective. Individual and collective well-being have gained attention in service research, emphasizing the importance of considering collective well-being.

The commentary underscores the need for a comprehensive approach to develop services that contribute to the well-being of the human species. It calls for research that transcends dyadic interactions, considers systemic dynamics and broadens the focus from individual to collective and population well-being.

This paper discusses important societal issues of poverty, hunger and good health and well-being and the need for integrated and ecosystem approaches to develop equitable and sustainable solutions for collective well-being.

While SDGs 1, 2 and 3 address individual goals, they collectively underpin the well-being of communities and societies.

This study aims to explore how the top 50 Australian companies are disclosing their commitment to addressing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) formulated by the United Nations (UN) in 2015. By investigating the nature and substantiveness of SDG reporting, this study provides exploratory evidence on how companies are taking the initial steps to addressing the SDGs.

A content analysis of SDG disclosures by the top 50 Australian companies was undertaken. This content analysis was guided by the KPMG (2018) SDG disclosure framework. Legitimacy theory was used to interpret the findings, establishing whether such disclosure was substantive or symbolic.

This study reports a moderate level of SDG disclosure among Australian companies. The top five most critical SDGs in Australian context are climate action, gender equality, decent work and economic growth, responsible consumption and production and industry, innovation and infrastructure. The findings also highlight that while the focus of Australian companies is on understanding and prioritizing SDGs, the measurement of SDGs performance needs to increase.

This study adds to limited literature on the corporate responses to SDGs by establishing how companies, especially in Australia, are addressing these goals through changes to their reporting systems, thereby communicating their strategic intent in relation to addressing these goals. A focus on symbolic legitimation through SDG disclosure by the Australian companies in this study reaffirms the findings of similar studies and suggests a need for more substantive SDG management and disclosure if these goals are to be adequately addressed by the corporate sector.

The findings of this study provide insights into the current practices and future prospects of corporate responses to SDGs. Policy implications could arise in relation to possible approaches for disclosing social and environmental information and the paper argues for a potential need for regulation of non-financial reporting.

This study contributes to the limited understanding of the corporate response to an urgent sustainability call made by the UN by providing evidence on how Australian companies are embedding, measuring and reporting the SDGs. The research goes beyond a descriptive analysis of SDG disclosure and assesses whether such disclosure is substantive or symbolic.

This study aims to highlight the impact of altruistic-self and hunger awareness on socially responsible food consumption through the lens of self-awareness and self-congruity theories due to the great challenge of Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger.

A survey was conducted with a sample of 812 respondents. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) confirm each variable's structure through the measurement model and test the hypothesis to support a structural model.

The results highlight that the combination of altruistic-self and hunger awareness (AS-HA congruence) drives consumers to execute socially responsible food consumption. Meanwhile, consumers' food-saving attitude mediation translates to the attitude towards responsible and ethical use increasing socially responsible food consumption, a contextual development in the theory of congruence. Conversely, hunger awareness is not confirmed as significantly influencing socially responsible food consumption.

This research provides valuable insights for academicians and practitioners in developing food waste management strategies that can be implemented to reduce food wastage.

Food waste is a global concern and is challenging for many manufacturing, distribution and individual wastage levels. However, food wastage by consumers is one of the most critical problems which can be minimised with awareness and attitudinal changes in behaviour as a form of socially responsible consumption.

This study aims to examine how board gender diversity and foreign directors influence the sector-wise corporate philanthropic giving (donation) of Islamic banks in Bangladesh.

Unbalanced panel data were extracted from the annual reports of Islamic banks in Bangladesh over 11 years, from 2010 to 2020.

The findings indicate that gender diversity significantly improves corporate philanthropic giving for the education sector but insignificantly influences corporate philanthropic giving for health and humanitarian and disaster relief sectors. In contrast, the results show that foreign directors significantly and positively affect the banks' corporate philanthropic giving for the three sectors.

This paper used only secondary data extracted from the annual reports of Islamic banks in Bangladesh between 2010 and 2020. Besides, only three sectors of corporate social responsibility activities were considered. Hence, the findings could not be generalized, as the study used only data from one country.

The findings can be useful to policymakers and regulators to provide policies and regulations that ensure the appointment of women and foreign directors to boards that can competently promote Islamic banks' charitable donations.

Inducing Islamic banks to provide corporate donations for activities related to education, health and humanitarian and disaster relief can contribute directly to achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) like SDG-3 (good health and well-being) and SDG-4 (quality education) and impliedly support attaining some indicators of SDG-1 (no poverty), SDG-2 (zero hunger) and SDG-10 (reduced inequality).

This study contributes to the literature by investigating how board gender diversity and foreign directors influence sector-wise corporate donations for the education, health and human and disaster relief sectors instead of aggregate donations studies concentrated by previous studies.

There is an urgent need to develop climate-smart agrosystems capable of mitigating climate change and adapting to its effects. Conventional agricultural practices prevail in Mauritius, whereby synthetic chemical fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides are used. It should be noted that Mauritius remains a net-food importing developing country of staple food such as cereals and products, roots and tubers, pulses, oil crops, vegetables, fruits and meat (FAO, 2011). In Mauritius, the agricultural sector faces extreme weather conditions like drought or heavy rainfall. Moreover, to increase the crop yields, farmers tend to use 2.5 times the prescribed amount of fertilizers in their fields. These excess fertilizers are washed away during heavy rainfall and contaminate lakes and river waters. By using smart irrigation and fertilization system, a better management of soil water reserves for improved agricultural production can be implemented. Soil Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium (NPK) content, humidity, pH, conductivity and moisture data can be monitored through the cloud platform. The data will be processed at the level of the cloud and an appropriate mix of NPK and irrigation will be used to optimise the growth of the crops. Machine learning algorithms will be used for the control of the land drainage, fertilization and irrigation systems and real time data will be available through a mobile application for the whole system. This will contribute towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): 2 (Zero Hunger), 11 (Sustainable cities and communities), 12 (Responsible consumption and production) and 15 (Life on Land). With this project, the yield of crops will be boosted, thus reducing the hunger rate (SDG 2). On top of that, this will encourage farmers to collect the waters and reduce fertilizer consumption thereafter sustaining the quality of the soil on which they are cultivating the crops, thereby increasing their yields (SDG 15).

This study focuses on the key success factors (KSFs) for strategy implementation in the fisheries industry in Iceland identified by chief executive officers within the industry. The purpose is to provide a comprehensive categorization of KSFs that influence how strategy is mobilized. The secondary aim is to uncover the level of priority that companies place on the dimensions of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The methodology involves qualitative case studies based on in-depth elite interviews with nine chief executive officers of Icelandic fishing companies.

The research indicates strategy implementation can be improved in four main areas. First, by engaging and involving all employees in the implementation process. Second, by enhancing bottom-up innovation and communication. Third, through alignment of the corporate strategy and the UN SDGs, and fourth, by following rigorous action plans with clear, measurable and prioritized objectives and timeframes for the managers to follow. These improvements have both theoretical and practical implications for the fishing industry. Consequently, a conceptual framework for integrated strategy implementation in the fisheries industry is proposed.

A limited number of in-depth elite interviews were conducted since access to the chief executive officers of the country’s largest fishing companies proved challenging. However, the nine companies collectively hold nearly 50% of the country’s total quota, thereby proving a deep understanding of the topic relevant to the industry. The research uncovered a substantial cross-section of viewpoints, and as such, the results are relevant for both academia and practitioners alike.

This study contributes to the debate on KSFs relevant to strategy implementation within a specific industry but also aligns with the UN SDGs by proposing a dedicated framework for implementing strategies in the fisheries industry. Overall, this study can help managers achieve strategy implementation.

This study aims to investigate the sustainable development goals (SDGs) awareness of public librarians, their perceived understanding of public libraries to achieve United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) and identify the challenges affect the library adoption to SDGs.

In this study, a quantitative survey method was used to collect responses. The study population was all head of public libraries in Bangladesh. Seventy-one personalized individual e-mails with a link to a Web-based questionnaire were sent out to the public librarians (head of public libraries) inviting them to participate in this study. Fifty-nine responded to the survey, which was 83.09% of all population.

The findings revealed that public librarians working in different public libraries were generally aware of UNSDGs. The perceived understanding on the role of public libraries to achieve SDGs varies from SDG#1 to SDG1#7. However, most of the librarians’ responses ranked well in line with SDGs#1, #2, #3, #4 and #17, and they believed that their public libraries are doing well on some of these goals. Out of 17 SDGs, public libraries are working well on 7 goals. Lack of SDG-related activities, awareness, funds, implementation plan and unwillingness of the policymakers are challenges identified in this study.

There are not many studies on public libraries in Bangladesh, and the research areas are not diverse. There are only few studies in this area, and there is a need for different kinds of studies to reach a better overview and understanding when developing public library services to support SDGs. This could serve as the basis for a deeper study.

The Agenda 2030 have drawn a lot of interest in academic studies. This necessitates accounting research on nonfinancial reporting and sustainable development goals (SDG) disclosure in an under-investigated context. The purpose of this study is to examine the contribution of nonfinancial reporting practices to SDG disclosure by 120 companies from 12 African nations for the years 2016 to 2020.

The study uses a content analysis to gauge how much information are disclosed on SDG by the selected firms. The authors carried out content analysis using the global reporting initiative frameworks to determine the level of SDG disclosure across the companies by examining the selected nonfinancial reports.

Sustainability reports account for 50% of such SDG disclosure making it the highest. This is followed by corporate social responsibility report which accounts for 23%, while environmental reports account for 20% and Chairman’s statement accounts for 7%. The result is expected since corporate sustainability report has been the major channel for disclosing activities relating to social and governance issues in recent times.

The results of this study demand that corporate entities in Africa take responsibility for their actions and exert significant effort to achieve the SDG. While the government has the main responsibility, corporate entities must support the SDG to be realized.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the few studies that examines nonfinancial reporting practices with a focus on SDG disclosure. In addition, this study offers novel insight into how accounting research contributes to nonfinancial reporting practices and SDG disclosure.

The nexus between sustainable agri-food production and food security outcomes of farm households in sub-Saharan Africa is attracting policy attention. This study analyzes the effects of crop diversity on the incidence of food scarcity, dietary diversity, and the sale and consumption of own crops.

The study uses panel data collected in 2015 and 2018 on a randomly selected sample of 2553 households from 49 villages in northern Ghana. The study employed a fixed effects modeling approach in the empirical analysis.

The study finds that crop diversity is positively associated with better dietary diversity, reduced hunger, lower food expenditure, and higher consumption of own produce. The results show positive effects of crop diversity on the total harvested output and sale of agricultural production. Whilst sales improved sustainable food and nutrition security by providing purchasing power to buy nutritional inputs in the market, consumption of own produce rather improved food availability by reducing food scarcity and malnutrition.

Crop diversity is one of the pathways for promoting sustainable agri-food production systems to ensure the food and nutritional security of vulnerable populations and promote biodiversity to achieve environmental goals in sub-Saharan Africa. Crop diversity reduces food expenditure and raises rural incomes through improved outputs and sales, which empowers farm households to diversify their dietary options to be able to overcome incidences of hunger and malnutrition in periods of food scarcity.

The present study improves the understanding of sustainable agri-food production through crop diversity and its implications on food and nutrition security outcomes. The panel data and fixed effects modelling approach address the endogeneity problem between crop diversity and household tastes and preferences.