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After more than a year of living with the COVID-19 pandemic, much experience has been accumulated by countries around the world. There have been many failures, and there have been some things that have gone well. Adult learning and education in some form has played a significant role in public health since, without the ongoing continuing educational interventions mainly via the mass media, the number of doctors and hospital beds would likely have been insufficient. In this paper we focus on the role of group behaviours in relation to the risk of contagion and we argue that any attempts to define a strategy to combat the pandemic must include a strong commitment to information dissemination and to the training of the populations in order to encourage behaviour change necessary to mitigate the spread of the virus. Against the backdrop of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, this article argues for commitment by governments to use adult learning and education as a tool for health prevention and health awareness and to prepare populations for whatever pandemics and national disasters that might emerge in the twenty-first century, the "century of pandemics". We therefore argue that populations must have at least a basic level of literacy and numeracy as foundational skills essential for enabling citizens to receive and act on vital information during a pandemic or disaster in order to engender greater resilience.

The emergence of COVID-19 has created many unanticipated changes globally, particularly in terms of the availability and use of water resources. This study aims to estimate the potential increase in global domestic water use, exclusively due to the handwashing requirement for COVID-19. To assess the potential increase in domestic water use, this study analyzed population and water use data of 175 countries. Based on WHO guidelines, the additional water required for handwashing per person per day was estimated to be 0.018 m3 and was integrated with water use and population data for the analysis. These findings reveal that if everyone washes their hands six times a day solely to prevent the spread of coronavirus, global domestic water use and total water use would increase by about 11.96% and 1.25%, respectively. Africa (23.88%), Asia (15.05%), Latin America, and the Caribbean (7.18%) are anticipated to have the most significant increases in domestic water use due to the increased handwashing. This is a concerning phenomenon because these nations are already experiencing water shortages, even before the pandemic. These results may aid these countries in achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6, by guiding stakeholders and decision-makers to take action to address the water resource management challenges posed by the unexpected rise in water use caused by events such as COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of the COVID-19 virus forced some changes in the strategy to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in some Asian countries. Applying a systematic literature review and middle-range theory of several previous studies from journal articles in the Science Direct database, this qualitative study aims to do the mapping of the focus of Asian countries in resolving the COVID-19 pandemic through their efforts to achieve SDGs. The results of this research will give recommendations to the governments of Asian countries regarding the focus of SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the risk transmissions across the green economy indices of three major regions which include US, Europe and Asia. The econometric analyses are conducted using DCC-GARCH and TVP-VAR connectedness approach to evaluate potential spillover effects within the context of oil and gold. Results indicate that green economy indices of US-Europe exhibit the greatest time-varying correlations among the three pairs during much of 2010–2022 consistent with that of the general equity market. However, co-movements during the COVID-19 pandemic period seem to display a change in pattern for green economy indices. The strength of the co-movements between the US and Europe displayed a declining trend, while that between US and Asia was strengthened, suggesting greater interdependence between these two markets. TVP-VAR connectedness analysis revealed that US and Europe dominate the transmission of the shocks across the years in the green economy, similar to that of the equity markets. However, during the pandemic a pronounced shift occurred in green economies when considering the risk transmissions within the context of commodities: oil and gold. While Asian green economy index was persistently a receiver of risk transmission from oil unlike the other two regions, since pandemic, oil displayed an asymmetric effect and has become the net transmitter of risk in negative returns of the green economies of US and Europe. This may reflect the diversion in environmental policies of the two regions in the recent past, and point to the dominance of energy sector in the green economy. These findings have substantial implications for the development of green economy policies and from an investment perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]