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Sustainable luxury has often been seen to offer both environmental sustainability and the possibility for innovative entrepreneurial development of natural and cultural heritage. The possibility and challenges of sustainable luxury tourism for Indigenous groups have been discussed by Poelina and Nordensvärd (2018) at some length by including a cultural governance perspective that brings culture and nature together. They stressed how protecting our shared human heritage and human culture can be aligned with a new wave of sustainable luxury tourism. To achieve this, we need to create links to both management and protection of landscapes and ecosystems as vital parts of heritage protection and social development. This chapter explores how and why we need to integrate social sustainability into sustainable luxury tourism, where we can foresee potential pitfalls and conceptualise nature-based and Indigenous tourism to empower local Indigenous communities and provide them with sustainable employment, economic development and community services. The sustainable tourism model provides brokerage necessary to strengthen their capacity for innovation, entrepreneurship and transformational change. This transformational change requires tourist visitors and non-Indigenous tourism operators to be open to a new experience with Indigenous guides and tourism operators to see, share and learn how to feel ‘Country’ (Poelina, 2016; Poelina & Nordensvärd, 2018). We will use Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) and its communities in Kimberley (Western Australia) as a case study to develop a sociocultural sustainable luxury tourism framework that includes governance, legal and management and social policy perspective.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impacts on Jamaica's tourism industry. In an industry already exposed to a multiplicity of challenges ranging from climatic change to globalization, the imposition of the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented in both pace and magnitude. Accommodation workers in the tourism industry are particularly vulnerable to these impacts given the travel restrictions and visitor skepticism which prompted the closure of many hotels. Such vulnerability may be compounded by intersections of gender, age, education, and skill set. A recent study by the International Labour Organization (ILO) (2020) indicates that the accommodation sector in Jamaica is dominated by female workers who are likely to be pushed into precarious employment circumstances. This chapter utilized a concurrent triangulation mixed methods approach to explore the experiences and socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 on accommodation workers in Negril, Jamaica, and the strategies deployed to navigate challenging circumstances. The main findings indicated that while most persons were able to retain their jobs, the impacts were tremendous as experienced through decreased workdays and work hours with women being disproportionately affected in comparison to men. These impacts also had significant implications for food and financial security forcing a lot of individuals to rely on limited savings or to budget by prioritizing these needs which were among the coping methods identified. Of great importance within the coping methods was the leveraging of social capital, particularly through family networks which resulted in remittances and other resources to mitigate the impacts posed by the pandemic.

The purpose of this chapter is to present a case studio on a successful urban sustainability public policy in Mexico: Línea Verde. The main goal of Línea Verde was to improve the inhabitant’s welfare through a sustainability project.

From a theoretical discussion and empirical research methods, throughout this chapter we present the results and discuss the possible elements that explain successful sustainable public policies.

Our main findings are that complex contexts like the Mexican – budgetary impediments, weak institutions, corruption, and federal fragmentations – political abilities seem to enable the final implementation of the project.

This case works as a laboratory of ideas to implement easily, or more effective, environmental policies in countries as complex as, or less than Mexico. Also, this case is valuable in terms of local governments’ analysis and their limitations and opportunities to implement successful environmental projects. The above, however, cannot applied exactly as described in this chapter, since political abilities cannot be manipulated, but this chapter opens future researches on what can explain successful sustainable policies or, if people’s relations may be more important than the policy design.

This case highlights the importance of politics in the implementation of environmental policies in local governments with budgetary limitations.

This case is unique per se because runs throughout an old oil pipe; also, it got enough financing and actors helping the whole project, it had a good policy design that could never succeed if it wasn’t for politics.

The economic growth and women’s empowerment nexus features prominently within United Nation’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). While the gendered view of inclusive economic opportunities has received significant attention in recent years, the gap between men and women in developing countries remains significant. Under the assumption that there are fertile prospects to bridge social responsibility and SDGs judiciously, this chapter explores the question: ‘what insights into women’s employment and empowerment can be generated from the state of cooperative enterprises in Nepal?’ The focus is on aspects of women’s employment and empowerment under goal 8, which promotes inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all. Learning from the Nepalese experiences, the chapter contends that cooperative enterprise social responsibility (CESR) needs to be approached as the vital link between the internal and the external interests of cooperatives to achieve SDGs.

The incidence of the COVID-19 pandemic has come as a big blow to every dimension of any economy. It disrupts the usual constructs and functioning of economies across the globe. Different macroeconomic variables such as income, employment, etc. have been in shambles because of the unprecedented pandemic. Such a situation needs an alternative thought to turn around everything, and circular economic approach indeed is a potent tool to weather this tumultuous situation. Circular economic framework facilitates recycling and reusing of wastes discarded. Because of various activities, wastes are generated, and if products could be generated out of wastes through a system, it would be beneficial to economies as this ensures the judicious utilisation of resources. Recycling, refurbishing and reducing are three important pillars of the circular economic framework, where product lifecycle gets extended and prudent use of existing resources can be possible. The usage of resources even out of wastes stands out to be a game changer in terms of sustainability of environment. The alternative usage of resources in this way creates alternative employment opportunities. The extension of product lifecycle through recycling and reusing creates alternative rooms for employment, giving ample opportunities for sustainable development. It leads to market creation for waste products. Such a circular economy approach, paving the way for alternative employment generation, leads to sustainable development. The present work tries to re-examine the efficacy of the circular economic framework and its resilience in the context of the unprecedented pandemic in terms of providing alternative employment opportunities. It attempts to underscore how circular economic construct positively impacts prudent use of resources through alternative employment generation in pandemic.

Entrepreneurial education is gaining traction in Ghana. The purpose of this chapter was to assess the influences of social enterprises in promoting entrepreneurial education, using Ghanaian social enterprises as a case study. The study adopted a qualitative research approach. A multiple case study analysis examined the influences of social enterprises in Ghana. Four in-depth qualitative case studies offer insight into social enterprise practices. Sustainability, innovation, control and employment issues stand out as key effects of Ghanaian social enterprise practices. The social practice theory framework is used to draw the linkages of the structure and agency relationships. Sustainability emerges as the most dominant impact of social enterprise practice followed by innovation, control and employment. These four descriptive terms summarise the universal effects of Ghanaian social enterprises' practices. The study identifies and assesses the role of social enterprises in social entrepreneurial education in addressing social ills and environmental challenges facing Ghana. The emphasis placed on each of the identified four constructs describes the plausible roles of Ghana's social enterprises in achieving productive entrepreneurship through entrepreneurship education. The result shows the pursuit of multiple practices is a common feature of social enterprises. The limitations of the study stem from methodological approach as it is qualitative approach bias and a single country case. Likewise, the subjectivities of the samples direct the results of the study. The study draws the attention of stakeholders and policymakers to the goodwill of social entrepreneurship education in Ghana. Many studies have been conducted on entrepreneurial education in the contextual setting of this study. This present study focused on the practices of social enterprises in Ghana that influences entrepreneurial education.

A major chunk of rural people live on agriculture and other allied activities viz animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries, etc. Rural development constitutes of lot of big data related to rural employment which has driven this study to address a research question that what is the application of big data in rural development with special reference to the world’s largest public works and wage employment generating poverty alleviation program – Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)? The concepts of MGNREGA are novel and innovative though the program continues to suffer from various rigidities depicted from the data. This drives us to the objectives of our research. The objective of the study is to explore literature and big data on rural development with special reference to MGNREGA, explore the upcoming challenges in rural employment with special reference to MGNREGA, identify gaps in existing literature and pave out future research direction. The present study paves various ways for future research directions for academicians, researchers and policy maker.

Tourism is being utilized as a key economic development tool of the 21st century. Serious concern over the benefit of tourism for the poor has contributed to discussion on community involvement and community participation in contemporary literature. In particular, sustainable development has become a way to address the long-term viability of income and employment in least-developed countries while attempting to preserve traditional customs and culture in the face of globalization. Sustainability refers to finding solutions to poverty without compromising the natural and cultural resource base needed by future generations to pursue their own economic goals. This task requires attention to the economic, cultural and social needs of all groups while focusing on solutions that are also viable for the long term (Bramwell, 2001; Davidson, 2007; Mfaume & Leonard, 2004). It is also important to note that social structures and cultural references vary noticeably within countries and regions. Therefore, three separate, independent instrumental case studies (also known as collective case studies) were conducted in three distinct Tanzanian communities in or around tourism destinations. The objective was to allow for the autonomy of specific cultural, social and business networks to be reflected in the research methodology.

Case studies allow for the investigation of constraints to economic participation within real-life experiences, as there is no clear distinction between the phenomenon and the context. Instrumental case studies strive to develop theory, or in this case, facilitate understanding of pervasive problems and do not require typical study populations (Stake, 1995). An instrumental case study is utilized where a ‘particular case is examined mainly to provide insight’ into a phenomenon and the case supports understanding of the phenomenon (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). The emphasis is placed on specific issues rather than on the case itself. The case in then used as a vehicle to develop a better understanding of the situation or problem (Stake, 2003). Single case studies are ideal for investigating a phenomenon that has not been previously studied and can make a significant contribution to knowledge (Yin, 2003). Since constraints to economic participation within Tanzania have not yet been empirically studied, each individual case study is exploratory in nature.

Once the specific case studies were independently derived and themes developed, a cross-case comparison offered insight into reoccurring themes or case-specific constraints. Using an iterative process, the strength of this methodology lies in the inductive approach that provides suggestive rather than definitive analysis (Welch, 1994). The first phase of analysis results in ‘within’ themes specific to a particular region. Using cross-case comparisons, emergent patterns provide similarities and differences between the three communities.