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Sustainable energy like renewable energy plays a critical role in achieving sustainable development goals including energy security in emerging economics. BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) constitutes about 23% of the world’s GDP, 40% of the world’s population and 36% share of the supply of primary energy in the world. Obviously the Bloc has tremendous potential in influencing the global sustainable clean energy transition with the advantages like lowering the costs of renewable, boosting employment in the sector of green energy, enhancement of energy security and improvement of local air quality. Despite the existence of varieties of renewable energy resources in the BRICS economies, renewable energy resources are found underdeveloped. The major objectives of this chapter are to assess progress of different forms of energy especially renewable energy, impact of development of renewable energy on carbon emission and policy issues in renewable energy development in the context of sustainable energy development of BRICS countries.

This chapter offers a practitioners’ perspective on how Islamic banks in Malaysia deal with unlawful sources of funds. Specifically, it investigates the practice of Islamic banks in Malaysia in dealing with funds that originate from unlawful sources such as accepting deposits for safe-keeping and investment and providing financial facilities to customers whose incomes come from unlawful sources. This is regardless of whether the sources of fund are wholly unlawful or there is a mix of lawful and unlawful sources. A quantitative methodology is adopted to collect data from selected industry practitioners who are directly involved with Islamic banks, mainly officers of Sharīʿah departments, members of Sharīʿah committees and other stakeholders of Islamic banks. Based on a simple descriptive analysis, it is found that majority of the respondents opine that when the sources of funds are deemed unlawful, the bank cannot accept such deposits, investments or give financing to a customer if he or she is known to possess unlawful sources of funds. With respect to the mixed sources of funds or activities, that is, lawful and unlawful, the bank should not be prevented from receiving the funds either for safe-keeping, investment or payment of financing. The study also finds that banks have the right to investigate the sources of funds of the customers whether they are derived from Sharīʿah compliant, non-Sharīʿah compliant or mixed sources as part of the general due diligence implemented by such banks.

Pakistan's present war against extremists has many folds and sheds. The country's initial participation in the Afghan War in 1979 later gave birth to different extremist trends in the country. State patronage of the extremist Wahabi Islamists during the Afghan jihad opened another conflict in Pakistan, and things became more complicated. The combination of external and internal factors gave birth to the worst kind of conflict, which now has not only become dangerous for the country's own existence but also a major threat for global peace. The Afghan jihad initially started as a war against Soviet occupation and later became the hub of global jihad-war against infidels.

This chapter analyzes how external factors promoted internal contradictions in Pakistan due to which the country became not only an exporter of jihadis for the world but also the worst kind of sectarian conflicts, including. Shia–Sunni, Deobandi–Wahabi clashes, entered into in the past two decades. Such a strong link exists with Pakistan's official support to global jihad. Draft sectarian groups now head to head with their opponents have killed thousands of members of rival sectors, have strong support from external sympathizers, and have spread in the country. The well planned terrorist activities of these groups reflect the fact that support to these groups in the past is now leading to a severe crisis in Pakistan. The nexuses of these indigenous extremists like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen with external terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan of Tahir Yuldasher Chechen Guerilla War has led to several bloody clashes in the country and outside.

Existing models of gift applied to religious charities are either abstract or sometimes very limited in their applicability to understand the reciprocal relationships throughout the interconnected chain of giving and receiving charities. The paper contributes to this debate by asking: How gift economy explains the circulation of charities across interconnected spheres of local governance? And what are the implications of these inter-linkages for social welfare provisions where states are ineffective in the provision of these services? To answer these questions, the study presents the case of Zakat in Islam and Dasvandh in Sikhism in the northwest of Pakistan. In both the cases, charity is an important element of the social welfare provision within local governance structure. The findings suggest that conceptualizations of the religious charities as a triad including God, the rich and the poor are unsuitable gift models for grasping the role of charities in the local governance of social welfare provision.

Microfinance which refers to the issuance of microloans and the delivery of other related financial services to mostly necessity entrepreneurs has remained a major developmental tool across the developing world. With its inception from Bangladesh’s village of Jobra in 1976, microfinance has provided financial capital to many poor households to engage in income-generating activities in order to increase their assets and reduce vulnerability. Most often than not, necessity entrepreneurs who endeavor to start their own businesses depend on microfinance as a source of financial resource into their Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs). Using Ghana as the study country, this study investigated the impact of microfinance on the necessity entrepreneurs in the areas of poverty reduction, employment generation as well as the various difficulties associated with Microfinance delivery in the Greater Accra region of Ghana. We conducted a paper-based survey with 378 MSE owners from this region. The results indicate that microfinance has contributed to employment generation and poverty reduction in the Greater Accra region of Ghana through the provision of microloans to necessity entrepreneurs to engage in various types of income-generating activities. However, necessity entrepreneurs are faced with loan inadequacy issues coupled with under-financing difficulties. More so, they are also faced with non-flexible loan terms and cumbersome loan application procedures which do not support business expansion and employment generation. This study contributes to the debate on the social logic concept of microfinance delivery and poverty reduction. Microfinance therefore remains an indispensable tool in supporting necessity entrepreneurs in promoting self-employment.

The restrictive measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to everything across the world. The global crisis hit every sphere of life. The mobility restrictive nature of the pandemic was a major blow to the travel, tourism and hospitality industry. For a country like Pakistan, with an unstable economy and struggling tourism, the pandemic served as ground zero. This chapter critically examines tourism dimensions in Pakistan and how it sustained the impact of various crises. It pays attention to the concepts of vulnerability, social and community resilience, and adaptive capacity to provide a theoretical understanding of the revival of tourism in Pakistan. It also considers the impact of COVID-led measures on the tourism industry and corresponding initiatives of the government. The chapter concludes by arguing that Pakistan should carefully monitor and assess the current debates on tourism policies and practices. The chapter suggests that the national tourism strategy should incorporate a mechanism that can address tourism in crises in addition to addressing the environmental, socio-cultural and economic impact of tourism.

The purpose of this chapter is to critically examine the leaders of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in Pakistan through a social entrepreneurship lens. The literature on social entrepreneurship was analysed to identify traits academics say social entrepreneurs have. Data were collected from primary and secondary sources. Primary sources of information were interviews with leaders’ former colleagues. Secondary research was conducted using grey literature, independent reports, web searches and the implementation of partners’ websites. The main finding from our analysis is that social entrepreneurship is an important driver of success in PPPs. All three PPPs had a focal person who exhibited important qualities found in social entrepreneurs and in one case, the decline of a partnership was observed shortly after the resignation of the social entrepreneur. Governments seeking to enter into partnerships with private organizations should prioritize finding social entrepreneurship in the partnering organization’s culture and/or leadership. Social welfare organizations are more likely to succeed if their management includes social entrepreneurs.