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In response to water scarcity in Sri Lanka, the government is implementing strategies such as rainwater harvesting, efficient irrigation, wastewater treatment and desalination. Initial efforts include the establishment of a desalination plant in Jaffna, with additional plans for the dry zones (DZ). The study aims to comprehensively identify the barriers to establishing desalination plants in the DZ and provide recommendations to mitigate these barriers. Additionally, this research provides valuable insights aimed at minimizing barriers to the construction of future desalination plants within Sri Lanka.

The study used qualitative methods, using an expert survey to identify current and future barriers, along with strategies for overcoming them. The collected data were analysed using the template analysis technique.

Regarding desalination plant establishment, various barriers such as high capital costs, high energy expenses, brine discharge, pollution, emissions, technical challenges, health concerns and waste disposal have been identified. However, specific strategies exist to address and mitigate each of these obstacles.

The study offers recommendations to environmental experts and government on expediting the approval procedures for desalination plants in Sri Lanka’s DZ. Adapted to Sri Lanka’s specific challenges, it highlights strategies and barriers essential for upcoming desalination projects. Furthermore, it emphasizes the financial advantages such as increased production and job creation resulting from establishing desalination facilities.

Through this study, promoting sustainable practices and fostering community involvement, it aims to enhance livelihoods, accelerate economic development and improve overall well-being through reliable access to water. Additionally, the study aims to enhance understanding of the importance of desalination in alleviating water scarcity, promoting community engagement and ultimately facilitating improved living conditions, health outcomes and economic opportunities in Sri Lanka’s DZs.

This study provides crucial direction for decision-makers by highlighting the main barriers to the establishment of desalination plants in Sri Lanka and outlining practical solutions. Implementing these strategies helps meet the region’s increasing water demands, advance sustainable water management, improve the standard of living for nearby communities and promote the socioeconomic development of desalination plants in Sri Lanka’s DZ.

Sustainable development is inseparable from rational and responsible use of resources and promotion of green entrepreneurship. The contemporary green development agenda encompasses climate, economic, technical, social, cultural, and political dimensions. International efforts to greening the global development are conducted by the major economies, including China as the world’s largest consumer of energy and the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. China is aware of its environmental problems, as well as of its part of the overall responsibility for the accomplishment of the sustainable development goals. By means of the decarbonization efforts, the latter are integrated both into the national development agenda (the concept of ecological civilization) and China’s international initiatives (the greening narrative within the Belt and Road Initiative). Over the past decade, China has made a breakthrough on the way to promoting green entrepreneurship and greening of its development (better quality of air and water, renewable energy, electric vehicles, and organic farming). On the other hand, emissions remain high, agricultural land loses productivity, and freshwater resources degrade due to climate change. In conventional industries (oil, coal mining, and electric and thermal energy), decarbonization faces an array of impediments. In this chapter, the authors summarize fundamental provisions of China’s approach to building an ecological civilization and measures to reduce emissions and achieve the carbon neutrality status within the nearest decades. The analysis of obstacles to the decarbonization of the economy and possible prospects for the development of green entrepreneurship summarizes China’s practices for possible use in other countries.

Since the early 1990s, Brazil has adopted an experimental approach to environmental management. Its reforms continue to this day and have produced robust water-management policies. This article reveals the different positions, the power structures involved, and the result of the disputes and agreements concerning the social construction of legitimate environmental behaviour in jeans manufacturing.

Comparative case study. Data collection for this research started in 2017 and ended in 2020. The data were gathered by concentrating on a few cases in two clusters. The author visited public agencies, trade associations, and firms of all sizes and levels of specialization in the industry and conducted semi-structured interviews with them. The intention was to acquire systemic and deep knowledge of the local industry.

The article's findings demonstrate a divergence in typologies that reflects the ecological limits in the use of natural resources, law-enforcement policies, and firms' legal status. The article extends our understanding of the ability of organizations to respond to institutional pressures to become sustainable. This study's findings provide insights for policy design in times of increasingly catastrophic pollution in regions that are immersed in global competition.

The study focuses only on two industrial textile clusters in Brazil, which may not be representative of the wider industry in the country or in other regions. The findings may not be generalizable to other industries or locations with different ecological limits, legal frameworks, and firm structures.

The article's practical implications include the need for tailored regulatory frameworks, effective law enforcement policies, promoting a culture of environmental responsibility among businesses, and collaboration among stakeholders in promoting sustainability. Policymakers, regulators, and businesses in industrial textile clusters in Brazil and other regions facing similar ecological and regulatory challenges can use these insights to develop more effective policies and practices that balance economic growth with environmental sustainability.

State actors emerge as the most important stakeholder group in forging the upgrading of water-management systems and technology. The optimal solution to the problem is cross-institutional and multilevel collaboration and coalitions between the different authorities and organizations involved who need to pay due attention to the relevant ecological limits and social needs. Only when this multilevel collaboration is achieved and maintained will the state's agents be able to collaborate with industrial actors and society at large.

The article examines the various factors that influence water usage and analyses the dynamics of change in two distinct locations in an emerging market. It demonstrates that, despite the existence of the same regulatory framework in both locations, different outcomes can arise due to the construction of diverse coalitions between social actors.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-03-2023-0154

Motivated by consumers' concerns about water resources, this paper studies the interactive impact of advertising efforts and water-saving on corporate profits in apparel supply chains. Moreover, this study attempts to find an effective way to improve the profit of supply chain members under different game scenarios. Therefore, this study explores the game scenarios with considering the cost-sharing contract.

This paper constructs two basic game models considering different market power in the apparel supply chains, and explores the Pareto improvement combined with cost-sharing contracts based on the basic models. Furthermore, this study extends the models by considering cost-saving and non-linear demand.

In this paper, it can be found that advertising efforts and water-saving have complex interactive relationships. Counter-intuitively, the increase in advertising efforts may increase water savings. Furthermore, it presents a Pareto improvement when considering cost-sharing contracts, and both the manufacturer and the retailer's profits may improve simultaneously. Moreover, it does not affect the main conclusions when consider the effects of cost-saving and non-linear demand.

Although some important findings have been reached, this paper can be extended in many ways in the future. For example, the coordination mechanism among supply chain members can be considered and the fair distribution of profits can be studied. Moreover, the influence of the government policies on the optimal strategy, as well as changes in social welfare can be considered.

This study offers supply chain members the guidelines on coordinating water-saving investment and advertising efforts which provided new insight into the interaction of these two factors in the apparel supply chains. Moreover, it can provide a coordination mechanism for the supply chain members to improve their profits.

This paper explores the interactive relationship between water-saving and advertising efforts. It can not only save more water resources but also enable consumers to enjoy more environmentally friendly apparel products.

The current literature mainly focuses on the impact of advertising efforts on firm profit. However, this paper studies the interaction between advertising efforts and water-saving in apparel supply chains. Furthermore, this study explores the optimal pricing strategies and Pareto improvement by considering cost-sharing contracts. It can provide theoretical and practical guidance for the decision-maker in deciding on advertising and water-saving investment.

The chapter focuses on universal access to clean water, examining diverse strategies to address the escalating global water crisis. Through case studies, it exemplifies how innovation and sustainable design can harmonize with local culture and traditions. By aligning projects and initiatives with territorial identity, societies can alleviate the water crisis while safeguarding their heritage and ecosystems for future generations. These kinds of solutions contrast with other initiatives that are not respectful of territorial identities, such as the intensive groundwater extraction practices prevalent in various countries, which endanger local ecosystems. In this aspect, the chapter highlights borehole drilling’s limitations, specifically in arid regions, where complex geological conditions often lead to suboptimal outcomes.

This systematic review examined the emerging threat of indoor and outdoor pollutants to public health in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

Pollutants and pollution levels are becoming an increasing cause for concern within the LAC region, primarily because of the rapid increase in urbanization and the use of fossil fuels. The rise in indoor and outdoor air pollutants impacts public health, and there are limited regional studies on the impact of these pollutants and how they affect public health. A comprehensive literature search was conducted using Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus, EBSCOhost, Web of Science and ScienceDirect databases. Significant search terms included “indoor air pollution,” “outdoor air pollution,” “pollution,” “Latin America,” “Central America,” “South America” and “Caribbean was used.” The systematic review utilized the Rayyan systematic software for uploading and sorting study references.

Database searches produced 1,674 results, of which, after using the inclusion–exclusion criteria and assessing for bias, 16 studies were included and used for the systematic review. These studies covered both indoor and outdoor pollution. Various indoor and outdoor air pollutants linked to low birth weight, asthma, cancer and DNA impairment were reported in this review. Even though only some intervention programs are available within the region to mitigate the harmful effects of pollution, these programs need to be robust and appropriately implemented, causing possible threats to public health. Significant gaps in the research were identified, especially in the Caribbean.

Limitations of the study include limited available research done within LAC, with most of the research quantifying pollutants rather than addressing their impacts. Additionally, most studies focus on air pollution but neglect water and land pollution’s effects on public health. For this reason, the 16 studies included limited robustness of the review.

Although available studies quantifying pollution threats in LAC were identified in this review, research on the adverse impacts of pollution, especially concerning public health, is limited. LAC countries should explore making cities more energy-efficient, compact and green while improving the transportation sector by utilizing clean power generation. In order to properly lessen the effects of pollution on public health, more research needs to be done and implemented programs that are working need to be strengthened and expanded.

While the petroleum industry remains to be the main source of energy in the world, it is responsible for a large amount of resource consumption, environmental emission and safety issues. In this industry, most of the refinery equipment are running out of their designed life cycle, leading to many challenges regarding equipment reliability, products quality, organizations’ profitability, human resources safety and job satisfaction, and environmental pollution, which affects not only the human resources of the refinery but also the people who live in the vicinity. This study aims to model and simulate the maintenance system of an oil refinery to reduce the rotating equipment’s downtime while simultaneously considering the three pillars of sustainability.

Considering the complexity of the system and its inherent dynamism, System Dynamics (SD) approach is applied to model and simulate the maintenance system of an oil refinery, aiming at reducing equipment’s downtime considering the three pillars of sustainability simultaneously. As a case study, the maintenance system of rotating equipment in the Abadan oil refinery of Iran is investigated.

Individual policies are investigated and categorized into three main groups: economic, social and environmental. The dynamic nature of the system demonstrates that applying combinations of the policies would be more effective than performing individual ones or even a combination of all policies at the same time. The findings show that to manage the maintenance and reliability issues in complex industries, only operational level maintenance strategies would not be helpful; rather, a holistic strategic solution counting different suppliers or even the government policies supporting the operational level maintenance decisions would be effective.

This study is the first which brings the perspective of sustainable policy-making in the SD modeling of a complex maintenance system like that of the petroleum industry. The developed model considers economic, environmental and social objectives simultaneously. Besides, it reflects the role of different stakeholders in the system. Furthermore, the policy-making attempt is not limited to the operational level corrective and maintenance solutions; instead, a comprehensive, holistic view is applied.

It is now well-established that good water quality is associated with economic prosperity, reduced incidence on public health and the good functioning of the various ecosystems found in our environment. Water contamination is mostly related to both diffused (agricultural lands and geologic rock degradations) and point sources of pollution. Mauritius has many water resources which depend solely on precipitation for their replenishment. Water parameters which are of relevance include total dissolved solids (TDS), temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, dissolved and particulate organic carbon and major cations and anions. The traditional methods of analysis for these parameters are mostly using electrical and optical methods (probes and sensors in the field), while chemical titrations, Flame AAS and High-Performance Liquid Chromatography techniques are carried out in the laboratory. Image Classification techniques using neural networks can also be used to detect the presence of contaminants in water. In addition to basic water quality parameters, the field sensors range have been extended to cover important major ions and can now be integrated with Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based models for the prediction of variations in water quality to better protect human health and the environment, reduce operation costs of water and wastewater treatment plant unit processes.

After completion of the case study, students will be able to decipher key concepts underpinning sustainable entrepreneurship and its application in the recognition and exploitation of sustainable business opportunities, decipher the application of circular economy business models, understand the pivots to achieve the billion-dollar valuation and analyse the strategies for value creation during the pivoting journey of a startup.

The case study traces the journey of Phool.Co, a sustainable biomaterial startup based in a Tier II city of Kanpur located in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, by Ankit Agarwal in 2017. Agarwal started with the vision of providing solution to the effects of water pollution and environmental damage. Ganga is not just a river, rather it is the symbol of cultural and religious faith in India. Although the river Ganga is considered a deity in India, it is one of the most polluted rivers. Every year 8,000,000 metric tonnes of waste flowers are dumped into the sacred river to pollute it further. The pollution poses grave dangers to the health and livelihood of millions of Indians. Phool.Co is a sustainable enterprise that has pioneered flower cycling technology. The dumped flowers are recycled to produce organic incense sticks, Florafoam, and “Fleather – the organic alternative to leather”. The case study traces the genesis of Phool.Co and its approach towards sustainability in the context of the circular economy. The case study primarily explores the pivot points for a startup to enter the unicorn club in the present context. To achieve the desired valuation, Agarwal must decide to rethink its business model. Will franchise model work for Phool.Co? Should Agarwal scale up with commercialization of Florafoam to capitalize the opportunity in packaging industry? Vegan leather is a nascent market and how will the consumers respond to Fleather is a pertinent question. The case study attempts to explore the challenges encountered in augmenting the valuation of sustainable enterprises.

This case study is suitable for graduate and postgraduate students enrolled in courses related to entrepreneurship, innovation and sustainability. The case study is of intermediate-level difficulty. There are no specific prerequisites to understand the case.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

Sustainability is a major challenge for India’s (Bharat’s) coal mining industry. The government has prioritized sustainable growth in the coal mining industry. It is putting forth multifaceted economic, environmental and social efforts to accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This research aims to identify the factors for sustainable improvements in coal mining operations. Secondly, this study examines the intensity of causal relations among the factors. Thirdly, this study examines whether causal relations exist among the factors to be considered for sustainable improvement in coal mining operations. Lastly, the study aims to understand how the factors ensure sustainable improvement in coal mining operations.

An integrated three-phase methodology was applied to identify the critical factors related to coal mining and explore the contextual relationships among the identified factors. Fifteen critical factors were selected based on the Delphi technique. Subsequently, the fifteen factors were analyzed to determine the contextual and causal relationships using the total interpretive structural modelling (TISM) and DEMATEL methods.

The study identified “Extraction of Coal and Overburden” as the leading factor for sustainable improvement in coal mining operations, because it directly or indirectly influences the overall mining operation, environmental impact and resource utilization. Hence, strict control measures are necessary in “Extraction of Coal and Overburden” to ensure sustainable coal mining. Conversely, “Health Impact” is the lagging factor as it has very low or no impact on the system. Therefore, it requires fewer control mechanisms. Nevertheless, control measures for the remaining factors must be decided on a priority basis.

The proposed structural model can serve as a framework for enhancing sustainability in India’s (Bharat’s) coal mining operations. This framework can also be applied to other developing nations with similar sustainability concerns, providing valuable guidance for sustainable operations.

The current study highlights the significance of logical links and dependencies between several parameters essential to coal mining sustainability. Furthermore, it leads to the development of a well-defined control sequence that identifies the causal linkages between numerous components needed to achieve real progress towards sustainability.