This study contributes to the existing literature by jointly examining the effects of geopolitical risk (GPR), investment in renewable energy (IRE), and green finance on the transition toward carbon-free energy and carbon neutrality, rather than considering these factors independently. The study provides novel evidence on how geopolitical dynamics and sustainable financial mechanisms interact to accelerate the clean energy transition across economies with diverse energy structures and development trajectories. The findings show that GPR significantly predicts CO 2 emissions. In contrast, IRE and green finance effectively lower carbon emissions and bolster nationwide competencies to counter climate change challenges. The significant role of GPR in CO 2 emissions suggests that governments must take focused measures to reduce sectoral and geopolitical risks to strengthen investors’ confidence in green projects, like IRE, while also increasing assets in green recovery initiatives, leading to achieving a sustainable environment and a zero-carbon society. The study contributes to Sustainable Development Goals by promoting environmental sustainability and carbon neutrality.
The study aims to examine the impact of green innovation on competitive advantage, focusing on the mediating role of green corporate image and the moderating role of firm resources. The simple random sampling technique was employed, and a self-administered structured questionnaire was distributed among 323 managers in green apparel organizations in Sri Lanka. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling techniques. The findings confirmed that while green innovation significantly enhances competitive advantage, the green corporate image partially mediates the relationship, and Firm resources do not significantly moderate the relationship between green innovation and competitive advantage. This study provides a unique theoretical contribution by integrating the resource-based view, the elaboration likelihood model, and the contingency model, and it strengthens these theories by offering empirical evidence. Further, this is original in its combined investigation of four constructs within a single framework.
Climate change is raising production risks for smallholder rice farmers in coastal Central Vietnam, but adoption of advanced agricultural technologies remains uneven. Guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior and Diffusion of Innovations, this study examines climate change awareness as a multidimensional factor associated with advanced technology adoption. Using cross-sectional survey data from 279 rice-farming households in Thua Thien Hue province and binary logistic regression, it finds that climate adaptation knowledge (OR = 2.948, p = 0.003) and climate change perception (OR = 2.676, p = 0.013) are positively associated with adoption, while climate risk worry is only marginally positive (OR = 1.262, p = 0.074). Agricultural impact awareness is negatively associated with adoption (OR = 0.465, p = 0.019). The results suggest that awareness alone is insufficient; policies should combine risk communication with practical training, locally appropriate support, and investment-risk reduction.
Flooding is the most common natural disaster and the leading cause of death worldwide, with impacts varying by location, intensity, and susceptibility. This study examined the socio-economic effects of frequent floods in the Kassena-Nankana Municipality. The research used a mixed-method approach, collecting data through questionnaires, in-depth interviews, and Focus Group Discussions with 398 community respondents and institutional participants. The results showed that recurring floods cause significant losses, including homes, crops, animals, and lives, leading to family displacement. The socio-economic consequences include widespread poverty, hunger, malnutrition, school dropout, and loss of social connections. The frontline organisations worked together effectively, but the lead organisation, National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), lacked sufficient funding, hindering its performance. The study recommends that NADMO should be adequately funded, and the government should provide early-maturing seeds and fertilisers to affected farmers. Additionally, flood victims should be encouraged to use early weather warnings to help them prepare and build resilience.
Achieving the low-carbon transformation of energy consumption structure is central to carbon-neutral development, yet how artificial intelligence (AI) contributes to sustained structural change remains insufficiently understood. Addressing this gap, this study examines not only whether AI facilitates the green and low-carbon transformation of energy consumption structure in China, but also through which mechanisms and under what conditions this effect is sustained. Using provincial panel data for 2013-2022, we estimate the direct effect of AI and test the mediating role of green innovation resilience and the moderating role of green finance. The results show that AI significantly promotes the low-carbon transformation of energy consumption structure. Green innovation resilience serves as an important transmission mechanism, while green finance strengthens this relationship. These findings deepen understanding of the AI-energy transition nexus and provide policy implications for effectively coordinating digital technology, green innovation, and green finance.
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into business operations is a critical driver of digital innovation and a firm’s ESG performance. This study examines the impact of AI on digital innovation and ESG performance within the Turkish service and manufacturing sectors, with a focus on underrepresented groups, including women and immigrants. This study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine how AI influences ESG performance through the mediating roles of team collaboration, creative mindset, and team structures. Empirical findings reveal that AI significantly enhances digital innovation and organizational performance by fostering a creative mindset and promoting team collaboration among employees. However, the impact of AI on team structures did not show significant results concerning a firm’s ESG performance. The study highlights the role of AI in fostering a more inclusive and collaborative work environment. It contributes to understanding AI’s role in promoting diversity and inclusion, thus enhancing organizational innovation and its ESG performance. The study’s findings suggest that the Turkish service and manufacturing sectors should promote strategic AI integration and inclusive practices to achieve sustainable growth and competitive advantage.
Payment-for-Ecosystem-Services (PES) has been promoted as an innovative approach to environmental governance capable of simultaneously advancing conservation and sustainable development objectives. While studies commonly assess the ecological and economic performance of PES schemes, less attention has been given to their organizational and administrative effectiveness. This study examines these governance dimensions of one of Latin America’s most prominent PES initiatives—the Water Producer Program (WPP) in Brazil. Drawing on a meta-synthesis of 125 publications, the analysis investigates how regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive institutional forces shaped WPP implementation. Guided by neo-institutional theory and institutional bricolage, findings show that WPP governance operated through hybrid and adaptive institutional arrangements developed in response to administrative constraints, land tenure ambiguities, and uneven organizational capacity. These exploratory findings highlight a need for expanded social science inquiry into the administrative dimensions of PES schemes to aid initiatives like the WPP in achieving their objectives in the future.
Public participation in strategic environmental decision-making has become increasingly complex amid contemporary social, economic, and political turbulence, placing greater scrutiny on the effectiveness of participation practices in Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). This study examines the added value of public participation in SEA, particularly for marginalised communities, where public input does not always translate into decision change and may generate resistance. Drawing on framing theory, stakeholder salience, and public participation models, the study employs a dual-method approach. First, a Public Participation Influence Score (PPIS) was developed through qualitative coding of input framing and stakeholder salience. Second, a binary logistic regression model assesses whether different framing types and stakeholder groups vary in their influence on decision outcomes. The findings show that both the framing of stakeholder input (informational, diagnostic, or prognostic) and stakeholder salience attributes (power, legitimacy, and urgency) significantly shape the likelihood of decision change in SEA processes.
Coal phase-out dynamics are well theorised in industrialised contexts but poorly understood in emerging economies, where explicit phase-out commitments remain absent. This comparative study of South Africa and Indonesia (1998-2024) theorises 'pre-phase-out' dynamics by using a framework combining endogenous institutional change and socio-technical transitions literatures. Despite superficial similarities, the cases diverge in important ways. In South Africa, regime underperformance and contestation over centralised sector structure generate episodic destabilisation driven by a reform logic. In Indonesia, a legitimate, performant regime is sustained by coal oligarchs whose commitment is conditional on profitability rather than ideology. International economic pressures of renewables cost decline and coal export prices prove more destabilising than climate policy or Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) finance. Reframing regime destabilisation as a precursor to phase-out yields implications for JETP design, Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) response, and just transition strategy in coal-dependent Global South contexts.
Kenya is a major importer of second-hand vehicles, many of which become prematurely end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) due to road traffic accidents. Without robust regulations and institutional frameworks, these ELVs threaten environmental quality, public health, and urban sustainability. This study examines the management of premature ELVs through a cross-sectional mixed-methods case study of Nairobi City County. Data were collected through household and garage surveys, key informant interviews, focus group discussions and secondary sources. Findings reveal policy and legislative gaps, fragmented institutional mandates, and the dominance of informal recovery systems that prioritize economic value over environmental compliance. Although informal practices treat waste as a resource, they result in inefficient material recovery and environmental harm. The study proposes an integrated management framework incorporating circular economy principles, institutional coordination, and Extended Producer or Importer Responsibility mechanisms, including Advanced Recycling Fee to support sustainable financing and environmentally sound management of premature ELVs in import-dependent economies.
Although wastewater can be considered a significant resource for augmenting domestic, agricultural, and industrial water supplies, drawbacks in its management result in environmental pollution. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study focused on understanding the realization of urban governance in wastewater management in Tema, Ghana. The key findings indicate that wastewater management is conducted in a restrictive environment, dictated by a lack of strategic and infrastructural planning, inadequate finances, and the public’s unwillingness to pay for improved services. It is further characterized by decentralization bottlenecks and an inability to stimulate private sector interest and investment. Improving urban environmental governance and practices, including wastewater management in African cities, requires city authorities and key actors in the water and wastewater management sector to deepen community engagement, create awareness, and strengthen partnerships and collaborations to improve the proper handling and disposal of wastewater.
This study examines how bonding, bridging, and linking social capital shape community engagement with urban air quality governance in Lahore, Pakistan. Employing a convergent parallel mixed-methods design, the research triangulates survey findings with insights from semi-structured interviews. Bonding social capital facilitates local coping and mutual aid but remains confined to symptomatic relief rather than structural change. Bridging capital is weak, constrained by socio-spatial segregation, the dissolution of elected local governments, and the absence of cross-community deliberative platforms. Linking capital is the most critically deficient dimension, characterised by low institutional trust, data manipulation by authorities, and minimal participatory channels, yet survey evidence reveals substantial latent civic willingness to engage when accessible mechanisms exist. The study argues that social capital cannot substitute for formal governance but is an indispensable component of inclusive, participatory environmental policy. Durable air quality improvement requires institutional architectures that actively cultivate trust, cross-class collaboration, and citizen co-production.
This study examines the interaction between the transition to renewable energy (TRE) in Morocco and sustainable construction (SC) development. Data from 2001 to 2022 were analysed using coupling, coordination, and entropy methods. The findings showed steady enhancements in the coordination of the two subsystems as well as a strong acceleration following 2015, which can be attributed to the adoption of the National Energy Strategy and the country's climate commitments. These results were confirmed by structural break and before-and-after tests. RE policies have enhanced the TRE index, whereas SC has increased at a slower rate. This study suggests the use of green building codes, increased public-private partnerships, and the use of digital technologies to improve synergy in the two sectors. Moreover, this is the first empirical investigation to examine the synergy of the two subsystems and draw attention to their joint contributions to SDG 7, 9, 11, and 13.
This study examines how climate change drives land resource conflicts in Ethiopia, particularly in the drought-prone areas where environmental stress intersects with fragile governance systems, by taking cases from Harshin district. Mixed research approach, based on primary and secondary sources data, was employed. The findings reveal that drought frequency in the study area has been increasing as a manifestation of climate change. This trend places the district at the nexus of climate stress, mobility, and contested authority over land issues. More specifically, the ongoing climate variability has been forcing people to travel long distances with their cattle in search of water and pasture and such movements heighten the risk of conflict and further disrupting local community's livelihood options. Finally, this study emphasized that addressing climate-induced land resources-based conflict demands more than environmental interventions, it requires a transformation in how to govern land in the pastoral and agro-pastoral contexts.
Opposition to international climate agreements often invokes economic competitiveness, claiming the United States must exceed emissions limits to keep pace economically with other nations. Though framed as pragmatic, this rationale reflects a logical fallacy: justifying harmful behavior by pointing to similar actions elsewhere. The same logic would be rejected if used to defend practices such as child or slave labor. This study introduces consistent logic priming, a novel approach that tests whether exposing this fallacy in a different moral context subsequently reduces its persuasiveness in climate discourse. Across two between-subjects experiments with U.S. participants, this research tests whether framing the competitiveness argument in the context of a morally unacceptable practice weakens its effect when later applied to climate policy. In both studies, participants exposed to the primer expressed significantly less agreement with the climate argument. These findings show how logical consistency can shape reasoning by challenging selective justifications for inaction.
Carbon neutrality is an international agenda that must be accomplished in the framework of the COP requirements. To go beyond the metrics of traditional investment orientation, this paper explores how the output of clean energy, sustainable finance, eco-regulations, and financial innovation affects the possibility of the four developing Asian economies becoming carbon-neutral between 2010 and 2021. The study confirms the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) theory, through the prism of zero-carbon objectives, using panel unit root and validates mean group tests. Results indicate that the production of clean energy on a large scale can tremendously lower the rate of carbon emissions. Moreover, eco-regulations, green finance, and financial innovation also increase national abilities to achieve zero-carbon goals, reduce the risks in the sector, and create sustainable environments. This study offers practical recommendations and abstract implications to policymakers who switch to a carbon-neutral society by pointing out the transformation of energy inputs to quantifiable clean outputs.
Green finance is increasingly viewed as a critical mechanism for accelerating environmental recovery and sustainable development, yet existing research tends to focus on outcomes rather than drivers. We examine firm-level determinants of green finance in Saudi manufacturing firms during 2010-2021, focusing on energy market competitiveness, environmental regulation, and green innovation. The analysis uses panel data from 35 firms and methods including partial least squares, GMM, fixed effects, and random effects to ensure robustness. Our results show that stricter environmental regulation and greater market competitiveness significantly enhance green finance performance. Crucially, product-oriented green innovations lead to quicker adoption of green finance than advanced eco-innovations, likely because they offer faster financial returns. By identifying these policy and market drivers in an oil-dependent economy, the study provides actionable guidance for regulators and managers to calibrate environmental rules, strengthen competitive conditions, and accelerate investment in cleaner production and sustainable finance, supporting Saudi Arabia's sustainable development goals.
This study uses technological infrastructures to inform evidence-based policy design, addressing the conundrum of agricultural productivity and agro-environmental sustainability in Africa. The investigations are done using the Instrumental Variable Two-Stage Least Squares (IV-2SLS) strategy to control for potential endogeneity, covering the period 2000-2020. The findings show that farmers, in their pursuit of greater productivity, often adopt unsustainable agricultural practices, which degrade agro-environmental quality through emissions of nitrous oxide and methane gases. The findings remain consistent after considering the specific cases of crop production and animal agriculture. Similarly, results indicate that technology-infrastructure reduces nitrous oxide and methane gas emissions. Moreover, the negative marginal effect indicates that the indirect benefits for sustainable agriculture provided by integrating technological infrastructure outweigh the adverse impacts on agricultural sustainability. These findings suggest that policymakers should promote the integration of technology infrastructures into the agricultural sector, as they serve as effective tools for enhancing agro-environmental sustainability.
This study investigates the relationship between climate change perception and adaptation strategies in Lesotho, using Afrobarometer Round 10 survey data (2024) from a nationally representative sample of 1,200 respondents across all 10 districts. Descriptive results reveal that a majority of respondents view drought (81.6%) and crop failure (74.9%) as highly severe, while fewer consider flooding (29.5%) and soil erosion (44.2%) to be equally serious. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) results show significant regional differences in perceptions of climate impacts. Regression analysis indicates that awareness of climate change is positively associated with changes in water use, outdoor work and relocation but negatively linked to livestock rearing as an adaptation measure. Meanwhile, investment in climate-resilient infrastructure significantly boosts overall adaptation and supports livestock-related strategies. The findings offer valuable insights for designing informed and location-specific climate policies in Lesotho.
Applying a suitable Sustainability Assessment Tool (SAT) to a specific agricultural system is a key factor in driving sustainable changes. In particular, evaluating smallholder farmers in developing countries can be especially challenging due to their remote locations, organisational challenges, and limited record-keeping. For these reasons, small agri-producers are excluded from the evaluation process. This research aims to analyse the sustainability of this farming system by utilising SAFA (Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture Systems) Smallholders, as applied to the Ecuadorian banana agri-system. The results show that Labour Rights (4.42), Local Economy (4.36), and Fair Trading Practices (4.30) obtained the highest scores, highlighting the role of producers' associations in ensuring stable employment and fair prices. Conversely, water (2.76), biodiversity (3.11), and land (3.28) were the weakest indicators, indicating structural environmental vulnerabilities associated with monoculture and limited adoption of ecological practices. Despite these challenges, the analysis identifies the role of associations and the certification market as potential actors for sustainable change in the system. Finally, the SAFA approach is also evaluated. The assessment concludes that, although the tool is quite effective, it should be improved in three ways: omitting the Good Governance indicators, reducing the number of questions in the survey, and broadening the spectrum of results in the indicator assessment.
