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A continuing trend of global urbanization leads to a geographical concentration of population and social activities that causes a regional compression of concomitant resource and energy consumption. This paper argues that a Sustainable Living Lab infrastructure (SusLab) in urban areas facilitates a systematic integration of user's consideration in the design and development of Product-Service Systems (PSS) that enables changes of daily routines in favor of urban wealth development and conservation of ecosystem services. The authors build on the Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) Model of the Wuppertal Institute that provides a theoretical framework of sociotechnical rearrangements towards urban sustainability transition. Therefore, a reconfiguration of social practices and PSS in a desired direction according to social, ecological and economic concerns is reconsidered on the micro level in line with efficiency, consistency, and sufficiency strategies. The authors introduce an assessment framework for urban sustainable development and illustrate multifarious concepts of PSS that are aiming to decouple wealth development from resource and energy consumption in urban areas.
Sustainable supply chains : global cooperative regional economies for prosperity and resilience
(2021)
Two thirds of today's world trade is based on global value chains and supply networks. Purely regional supply chains have become less important in recent decades. The effects of these globalised structures are manifold. On the one hand, they promote employment and generate prosperity. On the other hand, they are beset by extreme social, ecological and economic imbalances.
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the fragility of existing supply chain systems. The lockdown continues to disrupt complex supply chains and many problems of existing production and consumption continue to worsen. COVID-19 is one example of the crises that can shake globally networked supply chains in the short term. Other crises, such as climate change, develop more insidiously and are less immediately recognisable. Different as they are, such crises have one thing in common: they highlight the vulnerability of global social and economic structures and illustrate the impact of global trade on the regions and people of the world.
This is precisely where global sustainability strategy comes in - it aims to fundamentally reduce differences and inequalities in opportunities and quality of life. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the entire world into upheaval, creating an opportunity to make sustainability a central political resilience strategy.
In the wake of the Corona pandemic, the discussion about resilient communities has flared up. In order to guarantee supply in the face of such crises, these should be more strongly regional and circular in their economic approach and global and sustainable in their perspective. The aim should be sustainable, transparent, non-exploitative supply chains that guarantee the security of supply to cover basic needs and public services despite sudden changes and crises.
This discussion paper draws a future scenario of globally cooperative, circular regional economies that fundamentally reduce global inequalities in opportunities and quality of life, while at the same time permanently preserving the natural foundations of life.
In light of Egypt's transition to a green economy, this report focuses on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increasing resource efficiency along three different value chains in which small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a crucial role. In order to support SMEs in Egypt to take advantage of implementing greening options along value chains, more detailed analyses are needed. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyse three selected supply chains to identify greening opportunities for SMEs. Against this background, the project report is structured as follows: Chapter 2 introduces the background with an overview over the concept of green economy followed by Egypt's economy and its green economy. This is followed by a presentation of the value chains and an overview of the respective sectors. Chapter 3 describes the research approach, methods and data collection. The following chapters examine the three selected value chains cotton, sugar beet and refrigerators, including environmental hot spots, greening options as well as the experts' evaluation of those greening options. The report concludes with key recommendations in Chapter 7.
Financial institutions play a crucial role in achieving the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. They can manage capital flows for financing the required transformation towards a decarbonized industry. Currently established policy programs and regulations at European and national level increasingly address financial institutions to make their climate warming impact measurable and transparent. However, required science-based assessment methods have not been sufficiently developed so far.
This paper discusses methodological opportunities and challenges for measuring carbon footprints of financial institutions. Based on a scientific case study undertaken with the German GLS Bank, the authors introduce an innovative method for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions from a bank's asset with a focus on loans. The authors apply an input/output database to calculate greenhouse gas (GHG) intensities and allocate them with bank's loans and investments.
Moreover, the paper provides insights of calculating avoided GHG emissions initiated by a bank's investment and loans. In conclusion, a high degree of consistent and standardized assessment methods and guidelines need to be developed and applied to promote comparability and transparency.
More and more companies are announcing their intention to become climate-neutral and numerous companies already offer climate-neutral products or services: From climate-neutral parcel delivery to air travel. But what exactly do the companies' net-zero targets mean? Is the target set ambitious? And what role does offsetting play, i.e., purchasing carbon credits that are accounted against the company's own climate target? The approaches behind the proclaimed targets are often difficult to understand. Against this background, this Zukunftsimpuls provides ten recommendations for the definition and implementation of neutrality targets. Among other things, the authors advocate the use of a robust database as the basis for net-zero targets, emphasize the importance of transparent communication, and highlight the role that offsetting should play. Purchased carbon credits should make as limited a contribution as possible for meeting climate targets and should only be used to offset emissions that cannot be reduced or avoided. More generally, net-zero targets should not be made the sole criterion for ambitious climate strategies. Rather, they are a building block of a much more comprehensive strategy of corporate climate action.