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Global warming is a process that takes place 11,500 years after the end of the last Ice Age. The main identified reason is the increased emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Since the nineteenth century, GHG evolution has recorded a quantum leap from the previous linear development. Human is the main factor behind this evolution, through industrialization and the exponential increase of population. Based on these, the chapter’s primary goal was to highlight an original method of predicting the future evolution of GHG emissions in the domains of Energy (including Transportation), Industry Processes and Product Use, Agriculture, and Waste Management. The novelty of the research consisted of testing several variants of functions (power, exponential, inverse trigonometric) to identify, from a group of variants. This optimal function would generate those predictions, which are closest to the real values. The causes that create GHG emissions in each of the four domains were the foundation for the analysis. This chapter focuses on two main subjects: first, the identification of a smooth function to predict the evolution of GHG emissions, and second, the function’s use to estimate the projections of GHG emissions in the coming years for the four domains: Energy (including Transportation), Industry Processes and Product Use, Agriculture, and Waste Management. An observation was that the weights of these four domains remain relatively the same despite the reductions in the total GHG emissions.

Why do significant cultural anomalies frequently fail to generate change in institutional logics? Current process models offer a number of direct ways to enable the creation and diffusion of ideas and practices, but the resistance to adoption and diffusion, something so emphasized by the old institutionalism, has not been incorporated as directly in those models in a way that allows us to answer this question. Therefore, we theorize three retrenchment processes that impede innovation: cultural positioning, behavioral resistance, and feedback shaping. The ways in which these processes work are detailed in a case study of one high profile cultural anomaly: oil production and environmental management in Alberta’s oil sands from 2008 to 2011. Implications for the institutional logics perspective and understanding logics in action are discussed.

In the first millennium AD when international trade brought silver coins to Madagascar, they were melted down for jewelry or cut into pieces to meet the needs of small-scale local trade. The Merina culture of the highland interior saw in the original uncut silver coin an image of completeness and perfection. Such coins became obligatory ritual offerings acknowledging the sanctity of the sovereign. “Ritual economy” is brought into fine grain relief when pieces of “all-purpose money” are used in ritual prestation and when markets become a symbol of morality indexing political legitimacy. Today traditions of the highlands have co-opted the royal offering of “uncut coins” for local ritual purposes and local ritual specialists engage in symbolic assaults on “all-purpose money.” This chapter draws upon Merina royal oral traditions, ethnohistoric accounts, and contemporary ethnographic work with Betsileo ritual specialists to argue that the poetic and the syncretic necessarily enter into discussions of the economic.

This chapter reviews recent developments in sustainability regarding cities of the world. Using the approach of a literature review, this chapter highlights sustainability innovations in the context of cities. The chapter identifies several indexes which assess quality of life (QOL) or prosperity in cities of the world. One web-based index which relies heavily on the inputs of citizens around the world is Numbeo. The literature review identifies ways cities have pursued climate change mitigation through encouragement of electrical vehicles and alternative modes of transportation. Innovations that have become controversial in cities are also identified. Analysis of Numbeo suggests this index shows promise of future value for researchers interested in city QOL—specifically its pollution perceptions index. As urbanization continues with more than half of the world's population now residing in cities, interest in the sustainability of cities will intensify. Sustainability indexes for cities are now being developed. Analysis of Numbeo's novel approach to gauging the pollution of cities through the reports of hundreds of thousands of individuals living around the world suggests that this approach holds promise for future development. While other disciplines have taken focus on city sustainability, this is the first study within the domain of marketing research to provide an overview of city sustainability for marketing researchers and to analyze a new way of measuring a component of city QOL—perceptions of city pollution. Results suggest that valuable results will likely be forthcoming as researches continue developing city sustainability measures and indexes in the future.

X = multiple interpretations

The Gangetic delta, sustaining the Sundarbans mangrove forest at the apex of the Bay of Bengal is recognized as one of the most diversified and productive ecosystems in the Indian subcontinent. The deltaic lobe is unique for its wilderness, mangrove gene pool and tiger habitat. However, due to intense industrial activities in the upstream zone, and several anthropogenic factors, the aquatic phase in the western part of the deltaic complex is exposed to pollution from domestic sewage and industrial effluents leading to serious impacts on biota. The presence of Haldia port-cum-industrial complex in the upstream region of the lower Gangetic delta (adjacent to western sector of Indian Sundarbans) has accelerated the pollution problem to a much greater dimension. The organic and inorganic wastes released from industries and urban units contain substantial concentrations of heavy metals. The present article aims to highlight the level of selective heavy metals (zinc, copper, and lead) in the water and muscle of a commercially important shellfish species (Penaeus monodon, commonly known as tiger prawn) collected from two sectors (western and central) in the Indian Sundarbans. Heavy metals are accumulated in the prawn muscle in the following order – zinc > copper > lead – which is similar to the order in the ambient estuarine water. Significant spatial variations of heavy metal concentrations in estuarine water and prawn muscle were observed between the selected sectors, which reflect the adverse impact of intense industrialization, unplanned tourism, and rapid urbanization on the mangrove ecosystem and its biotic community, particularly in the western Indian Sundarbans.

The adverse effect of plastic pollution on the tourism industry is one of the emerging research areas in the field of sustainable tourism over the past years. However, there is a lack of discussion on this issue in the academic platforms. Considering this, in this chapter, a scientometric analysis of 110 academic publications from the Web of Science (WoS) between 1999 and 2021 related to plastic pollution and tourism is presented. A bibliometric analysis using CiteSpace was utilised to analyse the data to present the keyword timezone, collaboration network and co-citation network. The analysis shows that the publications in this field have increased rapidly, and it has become an emerging and interdisciplinary research topic. Scholars from Australia, Spain, Brazil and China have published most on the topic. The Chinese Academy of Science with four articles is the largest contributor in this field among other institutions. Moreover, citizen science is found to be a new keyword coming up in recent years, and human health is one of the major concerns. The findings from this study provide valuable insights for the academicians and policy makers in understanding the issue.

As the size of the population is growing and the capacity of the planet Earth is limited, human beings are searching for sustainable and technology-enabled solutions to support society, ecology and economy. One of the solutions has been developing smart sustainable cities. Smart sustainable cities are cities as systems, where their infrastructure, different subsystems and different functional domains are virtually connected to the information and communication technologies (ICT) and internet via sensors and devices and the Internet of Things (IoT), to collect and process real-time Big Data and make efficient, effective and sustainable solutions for a democratic and liveable city for its various stakeholders. This chapter explores the concepts and practices of sustainable smart cities across the globe and explores the use of technologies such as IoT, Blockchain technology and Cloud computing, etc. their challenges and then presents a view on business models for sustainable smart cities.