The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) is a climate-sensitive region that functions as both a critical ecological barrier and a major terrestrial carbon sink. However, it remains unclear how growing-season net ecosystem productivity (NEP) responds to hydroclimatic variations across vegetation types and climatic gradients. Here, we explored the spatiotemporal dynamics of growing-season NEP across the QTP during 1981-2019 and quantified its climatic controls across climatic gradients and vegetation types. Theil-Sen and Mann-Kendall tests detected NEP trends, and partial correlation and partial least squares regression disentangled the relative contributions of temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, and evapotranspiration. Results showed that: (1) Vegetation acted as a net growing-season carbon sink, with mean NEP reaching 73.56 g C m-2 yr-1 in humid regions and 2.48 g C m-2 yr-1 in arid regions; alpine meadows in the southeast averaged 41.12 g C m-2 yr-1, markedly exceeding the 4.68 g C m-2 yr-1 observed in alpine steppes; (2) Growing-season NEP rose by 0.391 g C m-2 yr-1 during 1981-2019, with the largest gains in arid and semi-arid shrublands and meadows; (3) Climatic controls were spatially heterogeneous: temperature dominated NEP variability in humid regions and alpine meadows, whereas precipitation was the primary driver in arid and semi-arid zones, and evapotranspiration consistently exerted a negative constraint on NEP, underscoring the limiting role of water loss on carbon sequestration. These findings reveal pronounced spatial heterogeneity in growing-season carbon sink responses to climate change across the QTP, providing a scientific basis for region-specific carbon management and climate adaptation in high-altitude ecosystems.
Biodiversity markets are gaining global attention as innovative mechanisms to mobilise private finance for conservation and support nature-positive transitions in sectors such as agriculture. Yet, empirical evidence on their design, effectiveness, and governance remains fragmented. This study presents a systematic review of biodiversity market literature, combining PRISMA-based screening of 671 peer-reviewed articles with bibliometric mapping and thematic synthesis. The review focuses on peer-reviewed studies with accessible full texts, which may have excluded some relevant literature. We traced the evolution of biodiversity market discourse beyond offsets to emerging credit systems, stacked financing models, and nature-positive outcome frameworks. The analysis reveals major challenges, including the absence of robust ecological metrics, inconsistent governance arrangements, and limited attention to equity in market design. It also highlights mounting concerns, raised across the literature, about greenwashing and the credibility of market-based claims. Without robust design and transparent oversight, biodiversity markets risk undermining conservation goals and public trust. Our findings underscore the urgent need for more rigorous, transparent, and evidence-based approaches to ensure biodiversity finance mechanisms deliver real, measurable ecological outcomes. In response, we propose a five-pillar governance framework to guide future biodiversity market development: (1) policy and institutional anchoring, (2) inclusive governance, (3) scientific and ecological integrity, (4) fit-for-purpose financial mechanisms, and (5) place-based implementation. This framework offers practical guidance for designing credible, equitable biodiversity markets that support long-term stewardship and sustainable land use.
This study examines the impact of geopolitical risks on energy affordability in Europe from 2000 to 2023, with a particular focus on spatial interdependencies across countries. Geopolitical disruptions to energy supply chains increase price volatility and reduce access to affordable energy, especially in import-dependent economies. To capture these dynamics, the study employs spatial econometric techniques using two alternative spatial weight matrices: a geographic (shared boundary) matrix and an economic (trade-based) matrix. Lagrange Multiplier tests and Moran's I statistics confirm the presence of significant spatial dependence, while Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) maps reveal clustering of geopolitical risks in key countries such as the UK, France, Germany, and Turkey. The Wald and Likelihood Ratio tests identify the Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) as the most appropriate specification. The results show that geopolitical risks have a significant negative effect on energy affordability under both spatial matrices, directly and indirectly. The magnitude of spillover effects differs across matrices, with trade linkages transmitting geopolitical shocks more persistently, while geographic proximity captures more localised diffusion patterns. These findings highlight that geopolitical risks propagate not only through economic integration channels but also through neighbouring countries. Thus, to mitigate these adverse effects and enhance energy resilience, policymakers should prioritise diversification of energy sources, strengthen regional cooperation, and improve the robustness of international trade networks.
Tourism, as an important component of sustainable consumption, plays a significant role in stimulating market vitality, promoting cleaner patterns of development, and supporting broader sustainability goals. Understanding tourism growth within the context of environmental governance is therefore essential for advancing sustainable development. This study investigates the impact of the Ecological Garden City (EGC) initiative, an environmental incentive policy aimed at improving urban ecological quality, on tourism development. Using a time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) model, we find that the EGC policy significantly promotes local tourism development, with stronger effects observed in cities with higher ecological quality, better air conditions, and more developed transportation systems. Beyond stimulating tourism growth, the policy also appears to strengthen sustainable consumption through enhanced public environmental attention and stronger government environmental commitment. At the same time, the results do not support the existence of a universal 'Matthew effect.' Rather than systematically widening regional inequality, the spillover effect appears limited and conditional, depending on specific urban and spatial contexts. Overall, the EGC initiative provides useful policy evidence for aligning environmental incentives with sustainable tourism development.
Improving the quality of life in rural communities is essential for sustainable development and poverty reduction. This study develops a structured decision-making framework to evaluate rural livelihood opportunities by integrating economic, social, and environmental dimensions. The analysis focuses on the Sundarban coastal region of India, using data from 171 residents to assess 10 livelihood options across 12 criteria identified through literature review, field observations, and community interactions. A new multi-criteria decision-making method, called Decision based on Root Assessment and Aggregated Score (DRAAS), is proposed to rank the alternatives, while Weights by Envelope and Slope (WENSLO) method is used to determine the importance of criteria. Individual responses are aggregated to ensure consistency in group evaluation. To capture sustainability balance and resilience, sustainability balance index and resilience potential index are also introduced. The results identify job creation, mitigation of greenhouse effects, and government support as the most influential criteria. Agriculture, sericulture, and tourism emerge as the most sustainable options, with performance scores of 0.8135, 0.8126, and 0.8087, along with sustainability balance values of 0.70 and resilience levels between 3.5 and 3.8. By combining local perspectives with quantitative analysis, the proposed framework offers a practical tool for evaluating rural livelihoods and supports informed, evidence-based policy decisions.
Energy justice has emerged as a framework for understanding how energy systems distribute access, affordability, governance power, and the benefits and burdens associated with energy production and consumption. Yet its environmental implications remain insufficiently understood. This study examines whether energy justice contributes to or mitigates environmental degradation using an unbalanced panel of 69 countries from 2000 to 2022. Environmental degradation is measured through the ecological footprint, with CO2 emissions used as an alternative proxy. Using a dynamic two-step system GMM estimator, the results show that higher levels of energy justice are associated with greater environmental degradation. This points to an equity - sustainability trade-off, whereby gains in energy access and affordability may translate into higher consumption and greater environmental pressure when they are achieved through fossil-fuel-dependent energy systems. However, renewable energy deployment moderates this relationship by weakening the adverse environmental effect of energy justice. Additional analyses indicate that technological innovation and economic development reduce this trade-off, while threshold results suggest that the relationship may shift toward synergy once sufficient levels of renewable energy, innovation, and income are reached. The findings are robust to alternative measures of energy justice and environmental degradation, as well as to additional estimators addressing endogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. This study contributes to the literature by showing that energy justice is not automatically aligned with environmental sustainability. Rather, its ecological implications depend on the extent to which equity-oriented energy policies are combined with renewable energy expansion, technological innovation, and economic development that supports cleaner and more efficient energy systems.
Ecological sustainability is an urgent concern, especially in regions facing high environmental stress. The Horn of Africa, where ecological pressures are intensifying, provides a key setting to explore the factors shaping sustainability outcomes. This study assesses the impacts of globalization, education, renewable energy transition, and trade openness on environmental sustainability from 1990 to 2023. Using the STIRPAT model, this study estimates long-run elasticities with the Driscoll - Kraay standard error (DKSE) method, and confirms robustness through FMOLS, DOLS, and CCR techniques. The findings show that economic growth and population expansion increase the ecological footprint, while globalization, education, renewable energy consumption, and trade openness help reduce environmental pressure. The results highlight the importance of clean energy adoption, education, and international integration for promoting environmental sustainability, offering policy guidance for low-carbon development in the Horn of Africa and other developing regions.
Tropical forests are central to global sustainability, underpinning biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, and disaster risk reduction. Yet, it remains unclear whether recent efforts have reduced tropical forest loss (TFL) and improved protection of ecologically and socially important areas. This study provides a global, spatially explicit assessment of TFL before (2011-2015) and after (2016-2022) the mid-2010s, a period coinciding with major global sustainability, climate, and biodiversity commitments. It examines how TFL relates to climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, and disaster (landslide) risk reduction using an integrated ecosystem co-benefit index, as well as to tropical terrestrial protected areas (PAs). Although annual TFL exhibited a statistically significant downward trend during 2016-2022, average annual TFL was 34% higher than in 2011-2015, increasing from 11.69 +/- 2.13 to 15.69 +/- 2.45 Mha/year, with significant increases in tropical South America and Africa. Across both periods, higher TFL consistently occurred in areas with moderate ecosystem co-benefits. Despite an 8% expansion of PAs and their greater representation in high co-benefit areas, the average annual TFL within PAs increased by 71%, from 1.12 +/- 0.19 to 1.92 +/- 0.41 Mha/year, while the average annual share of TFL within PAs rose from 9.6 +/- 0.5% to 12.2 +/- 0.9%. These findings indicate that recent slowdowns in TFL are modest and insufficient to offset persistent pressures. This underscores the need to strengthen sustainable forest management by addressing the broader socio-economic and institutional conditions that drive and perpetuate TFL.
As key pillars of China's national economy, old industrial cities exhibit significantly higher carbon emission intensity than the national urban average. A progressive research framework was established, with Siping City, a typical old industrial city in Northeast China, as the case study to analyze the coupling coordination between three urban development subsystems (population, socioeconomy, and land use) and carbon emissions. The findings revealed: (1) The coupling coordination between population, socioeconomy, and land use subsystems and carbon emissions remained relatively weak, with each subsystem retaining the potential for further emission reduction. (2) Carbon emissions were primarily driven by carbon efficiency, land economic efficiency, and intensive land use. Although the population declined since 2011 and exerted a certain inhibitory effect on emissions, its strength remained insufficient to offset the influence of these dominant drivers. (3) Given the relatively weak direct impact of the population subsystem on carbon emissions, its influence could be transmitted through the land use subsystem to the socioeconomic subsystem, thereby indirectly affecting emissions. (4) Economic indicators such as the number of employees (NEP), along with the land use metric, perimeter-area fractal dimension (PAFRAC), exhibited significant lagged effects on carbon emissions, indicating a close link between current environmental pressure and historical economic development patterns. Accordingly, when formulating emission reduction policies, a forward-looking, multi-system collaborative governance framework integrating population, socioeconomy, and land use dimensions should be established. Strengthening coupling coordination among these systems will support the dual goals of green and low-carbon transformation and sustainable development in old industrial cities.
Urban cycling plays a vital role in public health promotion and sustainable mobility, yet high summer temperatures often discourage cycling. Street shading can mitigate heat stress and enhance outdoor thermal comfort, but its effectiveness in promoting summer cycling remains unclear. This study leverages multi-source data-including Baidu street-view imagery and bike-sharing records-and employs XGBoost combined with SHAP analysis to investigate the relationship between street shading (tree shading and building shading) and residents' cycling behavior in Shanghai. Our results indicate that: (1) shared bicycle usage follows a 'dense-center, sparse-periphery' pattern, with substantial unevenness in street shading across central districts; (2) street shading can significantly increase cycling frequency, with building shading exerting a stronger effect than street-tree shading; and (3) both building and street-tree shading display nonlinear effects, markedly boosting cycling frequency once certain thresholds are exceeded, though excessive building shading produces diminishing returns. These findings suggest that strategically positioned and appropriately scaled street and building shading can improve thermal comfort, encourage active mobility, and support sustainable cycling in dense urban environments.
Ecological degradation and accelerating biodiversity loss increasingly threaten Africa's progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in the presence of persistent structural and governance constraints. While prior studies often examine ecological, economic, or institutional factors separately, limited evidence exists on how these dimensions jointly and interactively shape multidimensional sustainable development outcomes in Africa. This study investigates the roles of ecological integrity, productive capabilities, and institutional quality in influencing sustainable development across 37 African countries from 2000 to 2022. Sustainable development performance is measured using the Sustainable Development Goals Index (SDGI), a multidimensional index capturing economic, social, environmental, and institutional dimensions of sustainability. Ecological integrity is proxied by the Red List Index (RLI), while productive capabilities and governance quality are measured using the Economic Complexity Index (ECI) and a composite institutional quality index, respectively. The analysis employs Cross-Sectionally Augmented ARDL (CS-ARDL) and Common Correlated Effects Mean Group (CCEMG) estimators to account for cross-sectional dependence, slope heterogeneity, and mixed integration properties. The findings show that ecological integrity exerts a positive and significant long-run effect on sustainable development, while economic complexity becomes beneficial only under stronger ecological and institutional conditions. Institutional quality consistently strengthens the conversion of ecological and productive capacities into sustainable development gains. The findings imply that African countries should prioritize biodiversity conservation, strengthen environmental governance institutions, and promote environmentally sustainable structural transformation to improve long-run SDG performance.
Conservation agriculture (CA)-based practices reduce the risk of soil nutrient depletion by promoting the stabilization and sequestration of organic carbon (C) and enhancing soil biological functioning. To address this, a field study was conducted to quantify the impact of rice establishment methods, tillage and residue management practices for eight-years to identify the critical growth stages of rice and wheat for assessing the biological properties of soil under rice-wheat cropping system (RWS). The results revealed that direct seeded rice-reduced tillage followed by zero tillage (ZT) with residue retention significantly improved soil's extracellular enzyme activities except phenol oxidase (PHEOX) and peroxidase (PERO) across five growth stages of rice-wheat systems. Dehydrogenase (DHA), fluorescein diacetate (FDA), alkaline phosphatase (Alk-P), beta-glucosidase (beta-glu), total polysaccharides carbon (TPC) and cellulase (CELL) activities were highest at the maximum tillering stage of rice and wheat than at other growth stages. At the maximum tillering stage of wheat, activities of DHA, FDA, Alk-P, beta-glu and TPC under ZT-wheat with residue retention were 60.5, 35.8, 50.6, 30.4, and 31.1% higher than conventional tillage (CT) without residue. Furthermore, ZT-wheat with residue retention significantly increased wheat grain yield by 10.6% as compared to CT without residue. Principal component analysis (PCA) suggested that xylanase, phenol oxidase and FDA can be used as sensitive parameters for assessing soil quality under rice establishment methods, tillage and residue management practices in RWS. These findings highlight that practices like ZT with residue retention support sustainable intensification of RWS by enhancing soil biological fertility and crop productivity.
Circular economy (CE) policies in advanced economies are increasingly promoted as pathways for reducing material extraction, waste generation and carbon emissions. However, their transboundary implications for regions embedded downstream in global production networks remain poorly understood. This study examines whether CE policy intensity in advanced economies generates circularity leakage into Africa - defined as CE-induced increases in embodied material, carbon and end-of-life product inflows - and identifies the channels and regulatory conditions under which such effects arise. Using a balanced panel of thirty African countries over 2000-2023, combined with environmentally extended multi-regional input - output data, we estimate long-run and short-run dynamics using cross-sectionally augmented ARDL models, amplification analysis through global value chain (GVC) integration, and nonlinear moderation using panel smooth transition regression. The results show that higher CE policy intensity in advanced economies is systematically associated with increases in Africa's embodied material footprints, embodied CO2 inflows and waste-related imports, with long-run effects substantially larger than short-run adjustments. GVC participation amplifies these relationships, while domestic environmental regulation significantly attenuates them beyond an enforcement threshold. The findings highlight a structural tension between territorially bounded CE transitions and globally integrated production systems. They suggest that, without complementary international coordination and strengthened regulatory capacity in import-receiving economies, CE policies may unintentionally reallocate environmental pressures rather than eliminate them. The study contributes to debates on circular economy governance, environmental spillovers and sustainable development in the Global South.
Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) are increasingly recognized as a strategic approach to addressing urbanization, climate change, and ecological degradation in cities. This study employs a bibliometric analysis of Scopus-indexed publications from 2005 to 2025 to examine global research trends on NBS in the context of eco-city planning. Based on a final corpus of 148 documents, the analysis identifies five major thematic clusters: green infrastructure and urban resilience; NBS and climate change adaptation; blue-green infrastructure; urban biodiversity and ecosystem services; and smart sustainable cities. The findings indicate that explicit NBS for eco-city planning most frequently include urban forests, wetlands, green roofs, permeable green spaces, ecological corridors, and blue-green infrastructure systems. China, the United Kingdom, and Norway emerged as the leading contributing countries in the screened corpus. Overall, the results show that NBS research has evolved from broad sustainability discourse toward more integrated approaches linking ecosystem services, climate adaptation, biodiversity, and urban resilience. The study highlights the growing importance of embedding explicit NBS interventions into urban planning frameworks and calls for stronger research attention to underrepresented regions, particularly in developing countries, to support sustainable urban transformation.
