Sustainability Science - Science topic

Social media has emerged as an assertive communication and brand-building tool in the dynamic entrepreneurship landscape. This study explores the influence of social media usage on the performance of start-ups, focusing on the mediating role of brand image. The research employs a quantitative approach, collecting data from 450 start-ups in Ghana th...

Transformation of social-ecological systems is required to overcome complex and difficult challenges and move forward toward sustainable futures for humanity and the environment. We have accumulated case examples of autonomous innovations emerging among community members in rural areas of developing countries through transdisciplinary dialogues wit...

Background Paper packaging is increasingly being used to replace single use plastics to mitigate the negative effects of plastic pollution on the environment. While many developed countries have made considerable strides in this transition, developing countries, like Trinidad, have lagged behind, partly, due to no stringent legislation for types of...

Power allocation combined with pre-coding techniques is still an emerging field, with many challenges yet to be resolved. This paper contributes to filling this gap by proposing and evaluating hybrid algorithms that integrate pre-coding with low-complexity power allocation techniques for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)-based Wirel...

The transition to a circular and sustainable economy requires organizations to rethink how they operate, collaborate, and manage resources. Digitalization, a socio-technical concept of integrating digital technologies into organizational processes, can accelerate this transition, but it also brings its own environmental burdens as IT energy and mat...

Xizang is an important base of mineral resources, hosting abundant deposits. However, its unique and fragile ecological environment has long constrained resource development and utilization. Achieving a balance between ecological protection and mineral resource exploitation has become a pressing issue. This study proposes a novel approach for ecolo...

This case study aims to investigate the causes of low efficiency in a carton production line by calculating Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). A typical carton factory has been chosen for this study, which has two production lines, namely finished goods and corrugated boards. The define, measure, analyze, improve, and control approach is applie...

The relationship between aviation logistics and the regional economy (AL&RE) is mutually reinforcing. This study aims to develop a research framework for evaluating the coupling coordination level and identifying critical influencing factors in regional AL&RE by integrating the coupling coordination degree model with grey relational analysis. The f...

Inclusive management requires accounting for the diverse ways in which nature contributes to people’s lives. To uncover the broad spectrum of Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP) expressed by social actors, using plural methods has emerged as a useful approach in sustainability science. Yet, we lack research on how different interview questions i...

A nation’s ability to maintain a lower level of environmental degradation is considered pivotal for achieving a robust living standard. This study evaluates the short- and long-term effects of Bangladesh’s GDP, energy consumption (ENC), food production index (FPI), and life expectancy at birth (LEB) on CO2 emission using time series data over the p...

Action to transform urban environments is urgently needed and building more sustainable cities is at the core of different international frameworks. However, there is little research around what individuals would consider a sustainable and desirable city. To better understand this, submissions to an international competition were analyzed. Photos,...

In recent years, the heightened emphasis on sustainable and high-quality economic development has garnered substantial investor interest in corporate ESG performance, significantly influencing the long-term operational stability of firms. This study, based on data from A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2022, explores the relationship between co...

Green supply chain integration has become the key for manufacturing firms to cope with environmental challenges and gain sustainable competitiveness, but increasing the intention of firms to implement green supply chain integration is still a significant challenge. To respond to this issue, this study aims to theoretically discuss and empirically i...

Effective management of obesity and type 2 diabetes is a major global public health challenge that requires evidence-based, scalable personalized nutrition solutions. Here, we present an artificial intelligence (AI) driven dietary recommendation system that generates personalized smoothie recipes while prioritizing health outcomes and environmental...

This paper introduces a new conceptual framework that integrates Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory with Service-Dominant logic (S-D logic). The aim is to address sustainability as an emergent, co-created service within the Triple Helix model of businesses, governments, and universities. By linking the Sustainability Science systems-based approa...

Many countries in the Asia Pacific rely on community health workers (CHWs) to care for various health needs. In the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), malaria CHWs have been an essential component of malaria elimination. Yet as the malaria burden declines, the role of malaria CHWs in local health systems and communities is changing. There is a need to...

Advances in molecular biology, remote sensing, systems biology, bioinformatics, non-linear science, the physics of complex systems and other fields have rendered a great amount of data that remain to be integrated into models and theories that are capable of accounting for the complexity of ecological systems and the evolutionary dynamics of life....

Agricultural production statistics underpin diverse research efforts and development activities. Yet despite their critical importance, efforts to collate, update, and harmonize detailed sub-national agricultural production statistics are frequently redundant and incomplete due to the substantial time, effort, and resources required. The persisting...

Low health service use by women and infants after birth limits early infant HIV diagnosis (EID). From August 2021 to December 2022, we collaborated with 44 healthcare workers (HCW), service users, and non-governmental organisation stakeholders from seven public facilities and five non-governmental organisations in Blantyre, building on a previous s...

The scarcity of water resources exacerbated by climate change poses a major challenge for sustainable agriculture. This study presents an Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled irrigation system designed for real-time monitoring and precise water control. Using the Blynk platform and ThingSpeak for data management, the system integrates sensors for soil...

Anthropogenic global warming affects all aspects of ecosystems and human life. Thus far, most climate impact studies have mainly focused on local impacts because climate-driven hazards – e.g., floods, storms, heat waves – occur locally. However, as the occurrence of past events has already shown, local climate impacts cascade across sectors, region...

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) as a transformative paradigm in sustainable agriculture, integrating ecological, economic, and social dimensions to address the shortcomings of conventional chemical-intensive farming. Through a synthesis of advanced theoretical frameworks, empirical evidence, and po...

The growing global emphasis on sustainability science has catalyzed significant advancements in research and practice within this domain. Among the various initiatives, the European Union has introduced LEVEL(S), a comprehensive framework for assessing the sustainable performance of buildings. This system provides a standardized methodology for eva...

Green growth attempts to achieve sustainable development under continued economic growth and is currently one of the leading policy responses to mitigate climate change and prevent environmental collapse. We surveyed 3,028 academics in 101 countries on its feasibility and found strong divergence in endorsement, with 59% endorsing green growth. We i...

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease closely intertwined with stigma, discrimination, and the social determinants of health. Communities of people affected by TB are experts in their care pathways, but the TB field continues to fall short of meaningfully engaging communities in TB research. This is a missed opportunity to improve the quality,...

COVID-19 has tragically taken the lives of more than 6.5 million people globally, significantly challenging healthcare systems and service delivery, especially in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). This systematic review aims to: (1) evaluate the feasibility of telemedicine interventions for COVID-19 management; (2) assess the adoption of tel...

Innovation in enterprise development is undoubtedly important. The relationship between its structure and the formation of enterprise innovation factors is at the core, so it is crucial to clarify them. Therefore, based on data on A-share listed companies in China from 2007 to 2022, this paper adopts a multilevel structural equation model to explor...

Latin American countries have faced limited access to new scientific technologies for many years due to restricted budgets for research programs, which has hindered local scientific development. These research disparities became especially evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, as lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) like Ecuador and Nicaragua had...

Agroforestry, a sustainable land use practice, was introduced in western Kenya in the early 1990s as a soil fertility replenishment strategy. Since then, the effect of the practice on soil quality has seldom been evidenced. A study was conducted to assess the impact of agroforestry adoption on soil quality under smallholder maize systems in the reg...

Against the backdrop of global economic transformation and sustainable development, green technological innovation has become a core driver for enhancing national competitiveness and addressing environmental challenges. With the profound changes in production methods and technological innovation, new quality productive forces (NQPF) have emerged as...

Since 2014, the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) has hosted three interdisciplinary thematic schools on the vulnerability of the reef heritage (VulPaRe) in the Western Indian Ocean. Taking a sustainability science approach, the schools aim to build capacity, facilitate knowledge transfer, and foster collaboration...

The Aquaculture Governance Indicators (AGI) are an integrated social scientific framework for assessing governance performance for steering aquaculture sectors towards sustainability around the world. The AGI assess four governance dimensions against three governance principles. The four governance dimensions – legislation, voluntary codes and stan...

Cities and their governance structures face myriad environmental and sustainability challenges and are often important sites for environmental action. This is the case for biodiversity protection, which is increasingly an urban policy focus. Concomitant to this are conceptualisations of human-environmental relationships. Exploring and problematisin...

Objective The escalating food waste crisis, with millions of tons of food being discarded annually, highlights the pressing necessity to improve household food waste management practices. This complex and multifaceted challenge is a crucial element of a comprehensive national strategy for reducing food waste. This article seeks to examine the diver...

This paper investigates the critical role of land in advancing sustainability, drawing insights from the landmark report by the U.S. National Research Council, Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward Sustainability (hereafter referred to as NRC (1999)), and aligning them with the leverage points perspective on sustainability. Four key problem entri...

Over the years, sustainability science (SS) and social–ecological system (SES) research have emerged as critical domains within sustainability research, each addressing complex sustainability challenges respectively. However, their relationship dynamics and mutual contributions remained insufficiently understood, with limited data-driven analysis o...

Introduction Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) comprise a group of twenty diverse diseases or conditions that pose significant public health challenges and adversely impact the quality of life of affected individuals. NTDs are characterised by interconnected biological, social, and environmental factors, which complicate their effective management...

The term “polycrisis” has become a buzzword to describe the entanglement and reinforcement of multiple global crises that may put the survival of humankind at risk. It builds upon Sustainability Science and its research on the complex interactions of systemic risks. The research approach has its roots in the “Limits to Growth” report published by t...

In contemporary society, sustainability is a key issue that borders on overall human existence, and it has been rigorously argued that extensive efforts are needed to ensure the survival of the human race. Such efforts include corporate bodies changing the ways they operate to ensure that their activities do not yield negative impacts on the enviro...

Environmental policymaking has not fully recognized Indigenous environmental knowledge in sustainability science. This paper will address how Indigenous African environmental knowledge represents a sustainable tool for environmental conservation. I will address the human-nature relationship from a non-dichotomous perspective with emphasis on interr...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently considered a sustainability "game-changer" within and outside of academia. In order to discuss sustainable AI this article draws from insights by critical data and algorithm studies, STS, transformative sustainability science, critical computer science, and public interest theory. I argue that while there a...

The project aims to develop a sustainable smart irrigation system (SIS) for the indoor plant irrigation by integrating photovoltaic (PV), internet of things (IoT), and rainwater harvesting techniques. The addressed problem involves the inconsistency and tediousness of manual watering, emphasizing the need for a sustainable design for a SIS. The IoT...

The objective of this paper is to present a critical sustainability science research program, which is founded on two critical theoretical/philosophical traditions: critical realism and historical materialism. We elaborate these traditions to clarify what they can analytically offer to socioecological analyses in sustainability science and emphasiz...

E-learning plays an important role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This research aimed to E-Learning’s impact on attaining SDGs in Jordanian Higher Education with a primary focus on the University of Jordan as a case study. The study was conducted on a sample of 3,000 students at the University of Jordan from various majors a...

Outbreaks of the novel respiratory viral disease, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), have caused disproportionate morbidity and mortality for older people living in residential aged care homes. Between June 2021 and December 2022, the Delta and Omicron variants of COVID-19 were responsible for widespread outbreaks in homes across Western Sydney, New South Wale...

Atmospheric pollutants from container terminal operations have adverse effects on the environment in port regions, leading to increased health risks, including respiratory and cardiovascular diseases among local residents. This paper aims to assess bio-efficiency for container terminals (CTs) in the presence of air emissions utilizing a slacks-base...

Child marriage remains a pressing issue in Nepal despite a decreasing trend in recent decades. The Nepal constitution prohibits child marriage, and the local governments have implemented various strategies to combat it. Nevertheless, child marriage practice continues, particularly in remote and mountainous regions, posing a challenge to the effecti...

This study explores the experiences of allied health professionals who work in interprofessional hospital complex care teams. The aim of the study was to identify factors influential to meaningful clinician experiences in these contexts. Increase in interprofessional complex care in hospital settings reflects rising population health complexity. Fu...

The prevailing ecological deficit is devastating the ecosystem which is leading toward the unsustainability by endangering the livings on earth. The important drivers of this environment degradation are natural resources depletion, financial development and the economic growth which are investigated to test their impact on ecological footprints. Th...

Global South countries account for two-thirds of WHO Member States and are a crucial voice in negotiating the ‘pandemic treaty’, which Member States agreed was necessary if the world was to avoid a repeat of the significant inequity that resulted during COVID-19. The negotiation of a pandemic treaty presents an opportunity to recalibrate global hea...

The inherent unpredictability within the low-carbon integrated supply chain logistics network complicates its management. This paper endeavours to address the challenge of designing a low-carbon logistics network within a context of uncertainty and with consideration of low-carbon policies. It also endeavours to identify locations of facilities and...

This study investigates the intricate dynamics of international multilateral climate finance disbursements from 2003 to 2022 via an extensive dataset from the Climate Funds Update (CFU). By employing panel data econometric models, including pooled ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed effects (FE), and random effects (RE) models, the study elucidates...

This study advances the inclusive wealth accounting of human capital (HC) to improve global research on the valuation of HC for sustainability. By innovatively integrating complex population dynamics, including schooling and labor force participation, and using a net present value (NPV) valuation method aligned with capital budgeting principles, we...

Background Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3), focusing on ensuring healthy lives and well-being for all, holds global significance and is particularly vital for Bangladesh. Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR), Under-5 Mortality Rate (U5MR), Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) and Death Rate Due to Road Traffic Injuries (RTI) are considered responsible in...

The burdens and benefits of, as well as the recognition and participation in sustainability transformations remain unequally distributed across rural/urban, global South/North communities, leading to spatial injustices and peripheralization. The Summer School 2025 addresses this spatial unevenness from a diversity of justice perspectives, widening...

There is consensus in the field of sustainability science that co-production of knowledge is needed to generate knowledge that is useful for addressing matters of concern. The field has made important advances, particularly focusing on developing strategies and principles that ensure the effective co-production of knowledge. Although these lay nece...

In the face of climate change and resource scarcity, the built environment’s transition towards circular practices is thought to be inevitable. To foster a transition of any system, not only technological, but also social innovations are needed. Based on a literature review including both scientific and grey literature, this paper thus sheds light...

Introduction to the Biodiversity Session: The session explored biodiversity through three critical areas of research: Biodiversity and Food Security, Evolutionary and contemporary patterns of diversification, and Distribution and adaptation of species in a changing environment. Speakers: Dr. Colin Khoury, Dra Juliana Vianna and Dr. Mario Spinoza Or...

Relational approaches in research are now recognised as a potential pathway to fostering transformations in sustainability research. Drawing on insights from Chagga women at Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, we demonstrate how relationality can inform research methods used in sustainability science by uncovering more holistic understanding of how people...

Digitalization, digitalization, or digital transformation is a phenomenon without which it would be difficult to understand the reality of our time. Although it is often associated with the incorporation of technology into business, the economy, or our own lives, it goes further by involving a transformation process that can significantly improve s...

Food systems-based livelihoods are precarious for many of the most vulnerable and marginalised people, with climate variability and change posing a grave threat to food security. South Asia is expected to be one of the three most concentrated regions of hunger in the world by 2050. Whilst highly diverse in both socio-cultural systems and ecosystems...

Despite progress toward sustainability, it remains uncertain how we as a global society will make transformations needed at scale. We argue that intentionally involving children in sustainability efforts may catalyze promising changes in how we approach human-environmental crises. This involvement, however, entails much more than the traditional fo...

The United States (U.S.) healthcare sector—a significant contributor to climate change through emissions, pollution, and waste—is beginning to integrate sustainability into operations. Sustainability science and accounting have been widely adopted across other industries to measure and communicate mitigation progress. Transparency, defined as ensur...

Inter- and transdisciplinary (ITD) research is increasingly called for and supported to promote sustainable transformation through knowledge co-production, knowledge integration, and solution development. The paper explores what is needed to support researchers in reflecting on their new roles in ITD research. We introduce a reflection tool that ma...

This article delves into the complex relationship between societies and natures in the Anthropocene era, underscoring the crucial need to recognize and appreciate nature’s inherent gifts. It goes beyond market-based instrumental values, advocating for a shift towards embracing relational values and a caring attitude towards nature. The transition t...

In 2015, the United Nations adopted 17 sustainable development objectives (SDGs) with goals to be reached by 2030. However, as amply reported in the scientific and development literature, none of the goals are on track to be achieved globally. This is particularly true for sub-Saharan Africa. Under a complex socio-environmental context, it is argue...

The purpose of our study was to develop a toolkit to facilitate the implementation of functional electrical stimulation (FES) cycling for persons with a newly acquired spinal cord injury (SCI) in the acute care inpatient hospital setting. The researchers and community members used participatory action as a research approach to co-create the toolkit...

A significant number and range of challenges besetting sustainability can be traced to the actions and interactions of multiple autonomous agents (people mostly) and the entities they create (e.g., institutions, policies, social network) in the corresponding social-environmental systems (SES). To address these challenges, we need to understand deci...

It is widely acknowledged that one of the most significant and complex issues humanity has ever encountered is climate change. This complex challenge involves deeply ingrained political, social, cultural, and economic systems and environmental degradation. Agustı ´Corominas and Juan del Rı ´o’s documentary "Alter Nativas. Construyendo futuros posib...

Self Help Groups (SHGs) are informal groups amongst individuals that meet on a regular basis to discuss shared concerns. SHGs have become increasingly important in recent years for delivering development initiatives for both governmental and non-governmental organizations. To strengthen SHGs, BasicNeeds-Ghana, identified SHGs of people with mental...

Achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 remains a significant challenge, with 30% of targets showing no progress, regression, or severe deviations. Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) is a valuable method for monitoring and accelerating progress toward sustainable development by evaluating systems, processes, or products from environm...

This paper presents findings from a transformative collaborative panel discussion session at the 2024 STEM Education Conference, examining how nature-based, environmentally conscious, and culturally sustaining science teaching practices implemented at the Umonhon Nation Public School (UNPS) in Nebraska can inform teaching practices in the Rio Grand...

Context The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all sectors of society, with effects that have been acutely experienced at the local, national, regional, and global levels. Objectives This study examined the heterogeneous impacts of and vulnerability to COVID-19 for promoting urban sustainability and resilience. Methods We performed a scoping review o...

Given the need to strengthen responses to the growing challenges posed by climate change, the purpose of this paper is to explore innovative approaches and interdisciplinary perspectives for tackling these issues, focusing on the role of the institutional framework, emerging technologies, and the necessity to also encourage the involvement of small...

Sustainability has become a key concern of major sports events. Yet, the field lacks both a consistent definition and a conceptual model for sustainable major events. This hampers the emergence of a shared theoretical understanding of sustainability as an analytical object and the building of a practical framework to guide the sector towards greate...

Even though the effect of oil price shocks on macroeconomics has been extensively investigated, the literature on how efficiency in household energy use affect crude oil price volatility is yet explored. This study unveils whether household energy efficiency lower crude oil price volatility asymmetrically in the United States using the historical a...