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United Arab Emirates’ (UAEs) commitment to sustainable development is well reflected in its Vision-2021, 2030 and the Green Economy Strategy for Sustainable Development, followed by several initiatives at federal and local level. However, out of seven Emirates, the governments of Abu Dhabi and Dubai are adopting and rigorously implementing green initiatives for conserving energy, minimizing resources wastage and becoming zero-carbon ecology, leaving behind the other five emirates. To promote the implementation of government’s sustainability agenda holistically (including all the emirates), it is important to adopt a systems thinking to diagnose the complex social arrangements and their interactive relations with the larger systems and the environment at each and all recursive levels.

This viewpoint proposes that Viable System Model (VSM) framework can support sustainable planning and configuration evaluation holistically, by diagnosing the region (system-in-focus) together with the present and future environment, at multiple recursive levels of city, emirates and country-wide. To demonstrate the relative strength of the VSM structural framework and its principles to replicate/implement the green initiatives country-wide, the study provides supporting evidence and multiple examples of its application in other parts of the world for managing sustainability-related issues from smallest (town/city) to largest (national) levels in the United Arab Emirates.

The VSM framework has been adopted by several scholars for fruitful utilization of its structural, connectivity, recursivity and complexity principles in the context of sustainability at the organizational, territory and national levels. The discussion has been made on the suitability of VSM framework for implementing sustainable development initiatives county-wide by viewing it in totality and at multiple levels of administration and governance.

It has implications for leaders, policy-setters and regulators of United Arab Emirates as well as Gulf region inclusive of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman.

No prior work exists in Arab region where VSM has been proposed for the holistic management of sustainable initiatives. It has implications for leaders, policy-setters and regulators of United Arab Emirates as well as Gulf region inclusive of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman.

The majority of older Australians prefer living in their own home. Home modifications support older adults' ageing-in-place through mitigating environmental hazards of their home, and there is an increased interest in modifying older adults' residential environment in sustainable ways. However, an in-depth understanding of sustainability perceptions of home modification service providers (HMSPs) is lacking in Australia. Thus, the study aims to address this research gap.

Qualitative content analysis was adopted to identify sustainability perceptions through analyzing the retrieved home modification business information from the selected HMSPs' official websites. The results of qualitative content analysis were further analyzed by using independent-samples t-test and chi-square contingency table analysis to investigate the relationships between HMSP type and sustainability.

In total, 54 sustainability perceptions were identified, with the crucial ones being safe living environment, independent living and service diversity. Overall, there are no significant differences in sustainability perceptions between charitable and non-charitable HMSPs. Nevertheless, charitable HMSPs place more importance on social sustainability in comparison with non-charitable HMSPs.

The study results facilitate understanding about HMSPs' sustainability perceptions and sustainable home modifications in the ageing society, which facilities theory advancement and industry practice in the home modification area.

In spite of the urge among stakeholders to increase sustainability in the built environment, the South African Construction Industry (SACI) continues to suffer from low level of adoption of strategies such as life cycle assessment (LCA) to increase sustainable building practices in building and infrastructure delivery, hence the need to increase the adoption of sustainable concepts and sustainability practices is an emergent necessity. This study aims to identify the measures that can increase the adoption of LCA toward overcoming the practical difficulties, theoretical concerns and structural differences encountered in making gains in achieving sustainable practices in the SA construction industry.

The study adopted a deductive research design using a questionnaire survey with mean scores, Kruskal–Wallis and least square regression analysis done.

The study determined ten measures that can significantly influence about 88 per cent improvement in the success of LCA adopting in the SA industry. Also, there was a higher level of consensus in the findings which offers credence and good representation of the practical reality in the LCA adoption in South Africa.

These measures could be seen to embrace behavioural, social, technical and policy dimensions of LCA adoption. The findings are thus crucial in overcoming challenges to LCA methodologies in achieving sustainable building practices in the construction process in building and infrastructural delivery in SACI.

It is well recognised that Conservation Plan has attracted attention to the maintenance of historic buildings; despite diverse array of issues, particularly associated with “Green Maintenance” concept and methodology and sustainable repair approach. The theory of these three concepts currently exists, but fails to be realised in practical integration. The purpose of this paper to ask why this failure is occurring and how it influences sustainable historic environment.

The paper is composed of a critical review of existing literature and an argument built based on the concept of a Conservation Plan, “Green Maintenance” concept and methodology and sustainable repair approach for historic buildings.

Despite the need of maintenance of historic buildings, this review suggests that a Conservation Plan often mitigates against its own association with “Green Maintenance”. Conversely, this could be improved by transforming the integration to be more pronounced in achieving sustainable repair for historic buildings.

An integration of the concept of a Conservation Plan, “Green Maintenance” and sustainable repair approach could be utilised to form the basis of decision-making process for achieving sustainable historic environment.

An integration of Conservation Plan, “Green Maintenance” and sustainable repair approach will be positively welcomed as our society moves towards a low carbon economy and materials as well as “green” procurement.

Unless integration between of a Conservation Plan, “Green Maintenance” and sustainable repair is improved, much of our culturally significant historic buildings will not be repaired in sustainable ways and our future generation may lose their historic environment.

The rationale of viewpoint is to comprehend green consumption (GC) and sustainable consumption (SC). The purpose of this study is to understand how the phenomenon of sustainable and green consumers perceives in an everyday perceives in an everyday/routine life in modern today’s dynamic world society, where consumers clients are highly encouraged towards use and practicing sustainability, also to understand people’s personal lived experiences in this affair of green and SC processes. The adoption of sustainable business strategies has been a well-thought-out plan which act as a foremost driver for the socioeconomic development.

Present study is based on phenomenological interviews, using interpretative phenomenological approach (IPA) which has offered a platform to investigate, explore and discover to talk about latent prime aspects (causes to procure or adopt green products, its category, expression of feeling about perceived product self-assurance, readiness to pacification and consolation, familiarity of environmental-friendly products, reflection of alternatives, make use of and abandonment). Semi-structured exhaustive dialogues with Indian green consumers are set up to stimulate dialogue on their viewpoint.

The findings classify bewilderment of how sustainability applies in routine style for sustainable and GC followed by the consumers with respect to his/her behaviour and challenges of SC over GC, predominantly for ecological and environmental issues, and there was cynicism concerning higher pricing order of green and sustainable products available in market. Interestingly in findings framework, the analysis designates that green consumers represent a non-natural segment and offer auxiliary experiential description of sustainable development or sustainability as a measure of sustainable market and its orientation concept.

The idiographic nature of IPA, particularly phenomenological approach, may be considered as a research limitation. Well-presented research work is exploratory in nature; and a research team is followed by well-known guidelines in order to make certain impartialities. Though, the research conclusions are limited to Indian GC and a replication or limitation into different nations would aid in the direction to get rid of several probable nation partiality.

In a nutshell, here findings exemplify that green or sustainable consumers are shifting sustainable ideology from one situation to another, and that by speaking about sustainability, these consumers possibly will obtain a competitive lead.

The results or findings reveal green or sustainable consumers’ augmented association with sustainability and the role expected from them to create better society and world.

The research work exclusively places green or sustainable consumers’ dependence on heuristics to show sustainable preferences or choices, due to the lack of information and awareness, and it entails that sustainable concepts and sustainability are becoming popular nowadays; ever more included into their everyday behaviours and practicing. Very limited research studies have been done to investigate the GC and SC; measuring consumers’ actions using qualitative research approaches through IPA approach. This paper explores their consumption pattern and processes in detail.

The quality of city life and well being of city dwellers is central goal of urban planning approaches. Nevertheless, unsystematic and short-term planning approaches of cities have produced incomprehensible sprawl, which deteriorates social, economic and ecological sustainability of the city. The need to alleviate or remove these problems systematically for improving the social, ecological, spatial and economical components of the city is contemporary issue, though most of the planning systems do not yet explicitly address those issues of sustainability. This paper considers Urban planning as a key term as it has the capability to reveal the implications of land use strategies, policies and programmes for the social, economic and physical components of environment. In addition, all the traditional urban planning approaches have outlined to explore their soundness in the sustainable city planning, discuss the main approach followed for sustainable city planning, and outline emerging approach in both theory and sustainable city planning practice.

The technological revolution is fundamentally changing our lifestyle, work, and communication. There is still no accurate information about the future of this great transformation, but one thing is quite clear: the speed of the transformations in terms of scale and complexity, like a storm, will go through all aspects of a society's life and change all the current paradigms. One of the expectations from the fourth industrial revolution will be the expansion of smart cities in accordance with sustainable development criteria. In order for a city to be truly smart and innovative, city officials must pay attention to elements such as renewable and clean energy such as the internet of things, smart networks, smart parking, and smart transportation. In another sense, there must be a balance between economy, environment, and society in order to build a strong, sustainable, and flexible smart city that will survive the test of time. Of course, based on the 7PS model, the dimensions of culture and education are very important and fundamental for high sustainability. Researchers and those involved in the implementation of smart cities have explained the main indicators to identify these cities, which include some of the following items: For example, smart building, environmental protection, smart garbage collection, digitization of all government affairs and administrative work, widespread use of smartphones and electronic devices, complete, convenient, and universal access to the internet, car sharing service and online taxi. Other important indicators include the intelligentization of the traffic system and urban planning, citizen participation, economic ecosystem, optimization in electricity, water and energy consumption, development of electric and electric public transportation fleet, quality control and management, and reduction of air pollution. In this chapter, the theory of i-Sustainability Plus and i-Comprehensive Strategic Urban Plan is introduced as the beating heart of the ubiquitous blue-green smart city design. In such urban areas, it is all about the combination of real life, virtual reality, and in addition the future of clean technologies. In general, it can be said that sustainable smart cities are a solution to combat the challenges of urbanization.

The aim of this study is to propose a governance model and key performance indicators on how policymakers can contribute to a more accessible, inclusive and sustainable mobility within and across smart cities to examine sustainable urban mobility grounded on the rational management of public transportation infrastructure.

This study employed desk research methodology grounded on secondary data from existing documents and previous research to develop a sustainable mobility governance model that explores key factors that influence future urban policy development. The collected secondary data was descriptively analyzed to provide initiatives and elements needed to achieve sustainable mobility services in smart cities.

Findings from this study provide evidence on how cities can benefit from the application of data from different sources to provide value-added services to promote integrated and sustainable mobility. Additionally, findings from this study discuss the role of smart mobility for sustainable services and the application for data-driven initiatives toward sustainable smart cities to enhance mobility interconnectivity, accessibility and multimodality. Findings from this study identify technical and non-technical factors that impact the sustainable mobility transition.

Practically, this study advocates for the use of smart mobility and data-driven services in smart cities to improve commuters' behavior aimed at long-term behavior change toward sustainable mobility by creating awareness on the society and supporting policymakers for informed decisions. Implications from this study provide information that supports policymakers and municipalities to implement data-driven mobility services.

This study provides implications toward behavioral change of individuals to adopt a more sustainable mode of travels, increase citizens’ quality of life, improve economic viability of business involved in providing mobility-related services and support decision-making for municipalities and policymakers during urban planning and design by incorporating the sustainability dimension into their present and future developments.

This paper explores how urban transportation can greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provides implications for cities to improve accessibility and sustainability of public transportation, while simultaneously promoting the adoption of more environmentally friendly means of mobility within and across cities. Besides, this study provides a detailed discussion focusing on the potential opportunities and challenges faced in urban environment in achieving sustainable mobility. The governance model developed in this study can also be utilized by technology startups and transportation companies to assess the factors that they need to put in place or improve for the provision of sustainable mobility services.

In this Chapter, cerium (III) oxide nanoparticles were prepared by co-precipitation method using hydrogen peroxide as the precipitant in slightly alkaline medium which is greener and environmentally suitable, cheap and best as compared to other conventional methods. Here, hydrogen peroxide acts as precipitating, reducing and stabilizing agents. Since studies worldwide reveal a very strong, significant positive association between air pollution and COVID-19 cases, hence, this environment-friendly synthesis process will prove to be most economically effective one to combat the COVID situation. The synthesized cerium (III) oxide nanoparticles were initially noted through visual color change from colorless pale yellow cerium (III) to light yellow cerium (IV). Moreover, the formation and size of cerium (III) oxide nanoparticles were evidenced by the X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and UV-VIS spectroscopy studies. The very high surface area and very small average crystallite sizes of these prepared cerium (III) oxide nanoparticles (5–20) nm in size is mainly responsible for their catalytic properties and hence can be effectively used for the removal of hazardous toxic pollutant gases such as carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide from the environment with a view to combat the pollution within the environment to increase sustainability and also ensure a better, healthy and safe environment, particularly, in context of COVID in globalized world. This chapter, as its main objective, mainly focuses on utility of the nanotechnology and its beneficiary in creating a sustainable environment in economic world, particularly for gender development. Since the gas sensors will detect and reduce gaseous toxic pollutants from the environment, so lower the pollution greater will be sustainable environment development in terms of human development index and hence higher will be overall economic development in favor of Gender Development Index across world. However, as major findings, developing countries have been successful in maintaining a sustainable human development, in spite of higher Per Capita Income (PCI) growth, as compared to the role of least developing countries, with lower PCI in this global world, in favor of their respective gender development.

Failure in environment and urbanization policies can cause many challenges (e.g., widespread of informal settlements which generally lack proper infrastructure and sanitation) on human beings affecting their well-being and welfare adversely fostering gender inequality and gender inequality caused problems globally. Furthermore, environmental degradation caused epidemics due to animal-to-human zoonosis can further challenge health and well-being. Women are relatively more vulnerable and experience relatively more difficulties compared to men due to environmental degradation, urbanization problems, and informal settlements having poor infrastructure. Sustainable environment and urbanization policies and their integrated thinking with health policies are vital to enhance gender equality. Based on the literature review, this chapter aims to examine the role of environment and urbanization policies in enhancing gender equality and women empowerment. Furthermore, this chapter investigates causes and consequences of failure in environment and urbanization policies in addressing gender equality and women empowerment. This chapter emphasizes impacts of environment and urbanization policies on health especially on women health and well-being. This chapter further highlights the role of gender equality in achieving healthy and sustainable environment and urbanization policies. Furthermore, this chapter provides recommendations on how to enhance environment and urbanization policies so that they can further support gender equality and women empowerment effectively.