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Governments in the Global South have recently started to align their public procurement regulations considering Green Public Procurement (GPP) guidelines to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 12. In this context, it is important to establish environmental criteria to help decision making after analyzing the variety of options available in the market. Thus, using as examples two of the most acquired products in public procurement in Peru: Medium-density particleboard melamine furniture and paper offset, the aim of this paper is to determine the main environmental hotspots and therefore show the path to foster GPP in Peru. To achieve this goal, a Life Cycle Assessment was carried out considering it is a suitable environmental management tool to quantify environmental impacts. For this, a set of scenarios were modeled and compared for each of the two products selected, covering different geographical and technological options that are currently purchased by the Peruvian government. Results demonstrated that it is possible to attain considerable reductions in the environmental impact of the products analyzed if the main critical stages throughout their life cycle are identified and adequate solutions are applied to avoid burden shifting. Moreover, we argue that it is important for developing countries to carry out case-specific life-cycle inventories as they provide higher-quality information based on the particular characteristics of regional or local industries, allowing the determination of more realistic environmental impact mitigation benchmarks. Nevertheless, the inclusion of lifecycle-based criteria in GPP must be performed cautiously, avoiding command and control regulations, as numerous challenges remain in terms of capacity building, environmental awareness, and environmental information, and transparency in emerging and developing economies. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022;18:1206-1220. © 2021 SETAC., (© 2021 SETAC.)

The main objective of this paper is to elicit and assess rural communities' nonmarket values of the effects of mining on their (1) health and (2) environment directly affecting their economic activities. This paper is one of very few to elicit preferences about mining in rural communities in a developing country, close to mines and exposed to mining externalities. Using stated preference methods, we find that to prevent the externalities from mining, the poorest individuals in our sample are willing to contribute average amounts equal to at least their average households' weekly consumption expenditures. Our results are useful for stakeholders. First, this sector plays an essential role in the economy of many developing countries like Peru with little diversified economies. It is critical for these governments to ensure that mining activities are sustainable to avoid conflicts of many types and at various scales. Countries like Peru cannot risk missing out on the development benefits that well-governed mining can bring to them. Second, it is also urgent for mining companies to take care not only of their carbon and water footprint, but also their impacts on the environment and livelihoods in the regions where they operate, and their contribution to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These issues need to be of high priority for countries that are highly dependent on mining as their trading partners implement environmental regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to report on the status and the development of education for sustainable development (ESD) and sustainability literacy (SL) in three Latin American (LA) higher education institutions (HEIs) business programs in Peru, Brazil and Colombia. The paper examines institutional efforts to both introduce and implement ESD curricula and provide SL. Design/methodology/approach: The methods used in this paper included reviews of university Web pages and course materials. Structured interviews were also conducted with program leaders, to examine the level of ESD, as input affecting the business programs curricula of the universities concerned. Findings: Initial findings suggest that, in the three HEIs surveyed, there is still a tendency to talk about issues related to ESD but actions that confirm this interest are not sufficiently advanced. The authors surveys a sample of business programs curricula and interviewed its leaders and a mixed and dated picture emerged. When compared to other regions particularly the USA and Europe, the findings show that the HEIs surveyed still have not developed enough work to distinguish conceptually between sustainable development, ESD and SL making the embedment of these concepts in the curriculum not fully developed. Originality/value: In LA HEIs, the ESD message seems to be slowly taking ground, equipping HEIs to respond to SL concerns. Implementation and practice in some HEIs are still at an embryonic and conceptually confused stage with regard to LA HEIs SL. This paper sheds light to help ESD delivery. It offers some strategies for moving on from this inception phase to a more structured SL provision and ESD outlook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in the literature on tourism destination sustainability has grown notably in recent years, underlining the need for a greater strategic commitment by hospitality and tourism firms (HTFs). However, it is necessary to understand why certain firms develop a greater sustainability orientation (SO), delving into how the relational factors determine the SO of HTFs, which has been demanded, but not addressed. The aim of this paper is to analyze the mediating role of absorptive capacity in explaining the influence of bonding capital and bridging capital on the SO of HTFs in destinations. The empirical study was developed in a sample of 238 HTFs in Peru. Specifically, we focused on the UNESCO-recognized World Heritage Cities, which include the historic centers of Lima, Cusco and Arequipa. Using Partial Least Squares (PLS) to analyze the results, we found that bonding capital has a direct effect on SO and a mediating effect through absorptive capacity. Bridging capital has no direct effect, influencing SO only through absorptive capacity. Thus, we highlight the importance of absorptive capacity as a key element that drives social capital, especially the bridging dimension, towards a higher SO. Managers of HTFs should combine relationships with agents inside and outside the destination to reinforce their strategic commitment to sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the traditional knowledge on the management of stingless bee colonies and the use of honey by Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities of the department of Loreto, in the Peruvian Amazon. Semi-structured interviews and collection of voucher bees were carried out from June to August 2016 and from November to December 2017. The informants were selected through intentional non-probabilistic sampling (snowball sampling). During the study, 21 communities were visited, of which some of the community members in thirteen communities kept stingless bees. A total of 17 species of stingless bees are reported as used in the communities for either rearing or harvesting of honey from the forest with Melipona eburnea being the most common species. The way communities classify, manage, and use bees depends on how they perceive these insects, informed by knowledge processed and incorporated from other communities. In these communities, they use honey and pollen, with honey being the main product. Fourteen health conditions are treated with honey, with the most treated conditions being related to respiratory ailments, fertility, and reproduction. The study provides a basis for incorporating stingless bees into conservation and sustainable production policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are considered a cross-cutting tool that contributes to meeting the global challenges set out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, in many countries, there is still a significant connectivity gap between cities and rural areas. Using a case study approach and the Digital-for-development paradigm proposed by Heeks, this paper explores an innovative strategy for addressing the rural connectivity gap and examines its impact on the SDGs. The model under analysis is the Rural Mobile Infrastructure Operator (RMIO). The specific case analyzed is the first company operating under an RMIO figure and offering services in underserved rural areas of Peru. The results show that the RMIO strategy primarily contributes to some specific targets of SDGs 3, 9, and 17. Key stakeholders can use the methodology and results of this study to develop strategies to address the connectivity divide and promote the achievement of the SDGs in rural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines fiscal sustainability in Latin American countries from a unique time–frequency perspective, focusing on Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Mexico from 1997 to 2022. Using wavelet coherence analysis, it uncovers dynamic relationships between government revenue and expenditure over different time horizons, revealing varying causality patterns across countries and periods. The findings underscore the importance of balanced fiscal planning and resource allocation to ensure fiscal sustainability and support economic growth. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of Latin America's economic landscape and provides valuable insights for policymakers, economists, and stakeholders concerned with the region's economic stability and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intimate partner violence prevalence is a central indicator of the Sustainable Development Goals for women's agency. However, measuring its progress largely relies on self-reports that could suffer from misreporting. Focusing on a sample in impoverished urban areas in Peru, we replicate direct measures from the widely used Demographic and Health Surveys and compare them against list experiments, a method providing greater privacy to women. We find no significant differences across direct and indirect methods in terms of the report of physical and sexual violence. This result largely persists when testing across 16 different subgroups and accounting for multiple-hypothesis testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental governance often requires fulfilling different objectives at the same time, as environmental but also economic and social objectives of different actors and on different scales. That means, it needs to address (potential) goal conflicts. This challenge of how to achieve policy coherence is currently discussed regarding the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). It also touches on questions of policy design in general, on how to avoid contradiction and foster synergies between interdependent policy tools. This paper presents a new interdisciplinary methodology to design synergetic and sustainable policy mixes. It contributes a new approach for policy design processes addressing goal conflicts of sustainable development. The methodology uses cross-impact balance analysis (CIB), a qualitative form of systems analysis: A policy-interaction model is built by iterating between desk research and expert consultation regarding different objectives, policies to achieve them, and directed interactions between these policies. Analyzing the model allows identifying alternative policy mixes, which optimize different objectives at the same time, are free of internal contradictions and use synergies between policies. The methodology provides easy operationalizations for synergy and consistency and allows assessing sustainability performance and robustness of policy mixes. The methodology is suitable for both ex post evaluation of status quo and ex ante evaluation of alternative policy mixes. The methodology is applied to the water management in the Lurín river basin, Peru. We argue that the approach is transferable to further environmental issues and to SDG interactions on the policy level and supports policy coherence for sustainable development. • We present a new methodology to design and evaluate policy mixes. • The methodology addresses conflictive environmental management issues. • It uses cross-impact balances (CIB), a qualitative network analysis. • The methodology provides easy operationalizations of synergy and consistency. • It allows assessing sustainability effects and robustness of policy mixes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Study on how certification affects farmer welfare in Peru. • Analysis using mediation models for multiple years (2015–2019), standards & crops. • Certification affects farmer welfare through increased prices, but cannot offset higher production costs. • Standards with quality-based price differentiation have the largest price effect. • Certification does not affect farmer welfare through yields, but has a large potential effect. Whether Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) - such as Fairtrade, GlobalGAP or Organic - may contribute to economic sustainability has been subject to vigorous debate over the past decades. To analyze the welfare effects of VSS for family farms, previous studies rely on single equation models which enable analyzing if (some) VSS affect welfare, but not how (some) VSS affect welfare – or not. Hence, little is known about the mechanisms and the relative importance of these different mechanisms by which VSS contribute to farmer welfare. In this paper, we analyze the channel of effects through which VSS affect net farm revenue, as a proxy of farmer welfare, of family farms in Peru. We use nationwide data from Peru's National Agricultural Survey covering five years, multiple agricultural commodities, and multiple VSS. We apply a multiple mediation model which allows to disentangle the main revenue-determining mechanisms and to compare their relative importance. We find that prices (and not yields) are the main channel through which VSS affect net farm revenue. However, higher prices cannot offset higher production costs, resulting in zero net revenue gains. We do not find an effect through yields, but identify a large potential effect on net farm revenue. We find heterogeneity in the effects by standard and crop, with crops certified to standards that apply a system of quality-based price differentiation having the largest impact on net farm revenue through a price effect. From a policy perspective, we highlight potential improvements in VSS design to effectively improve economic sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Forest frontiers are important areas for sustainable development as they combine the need to halt deforestation with the challenges of rural poverty. In the region of San Martín, Peru, the 'Production, Protection and Inclusion' model combines narratives of conservation, economic development and social inclusion in what can be defined as a 'sustainable development frontier'. This article asks how such sustainable development frontiers change social, economic and ecological outcomes in the localities where they are found. The authors examine the reality of sustainable cocoa production linked to conservation and development goals, as promoted by government bodies, international agencies, cooperatives and chocolate brands in Peru, and show how, paradoxically, sustainability goals intensify production and attract smallholders into forest frontier areas. In doing so, the boom in demand for sustainable commodities has inadvertently created conditions encouraging further colonization of forested areas leading to a continuing rise in deforestation, ecological degradation and economic instability. Narratives of sustainable development can thus reinforce commodity intensification, as they obscure alternative approaches and reproduce traditional frontier dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research's aim was to comparatively evaluate regional development in Peru in the period 2015-2019, through the multidimensional elaboration of a Regional Development Index (RDI) that involves the four interdependent components of sustainable development (economic, social, environmental and institutional). For this, it has been rigorously followed the Principal Component Analysis (PCA), the Jenks Natural Breaks method, the sigma convergence and the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient. The results show that certain regions (Callao, Ica, Moquegua, Lima) triple the development of others (Cajamarca, Huancavelica, Puno, Loreto), despite the fact that the latter have large sources of development; one reason is due to the low progress in the institutional dimension. In hierarchical order, the dimensions with the greatest contribution to the RDI (degree of association of the dimensions with respect to the RDI) are social (95.20%), environmental (95.98%), economic (84.78%) and institutional (49.42%). In addition, the results show the existence of a regional sigma convergence, which indicates that regional disparities decreased in the 2015-2019 period. Likewise, Cronbach's Alpha Coefficient (0.90) reports the existence of internal reliability in the methodology used. Finally, the design of a web platform prototype that iteratively shows Peru regional development is included, using intelligent algorithms, big data, web scraping and geospatial information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by the commitment to address the environmental challenges in Peru under the UN Sustainable Development Goals 13 (Climate Action) and its implications by 2030, therefore, this study investigates the combined role of economic globalization, financial development, and fossil fuel intensity consumption using a combination of dynamic ARDL counterfactual simulation and kernel-based regularized least squares within the context of Stochastic Impact by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology over the period 1971–2017. This research output confirms the inverted-U-shaped hypothesis between economic growth and carbon emissions. In contrast, the kernel-based regularized least squares confirms the scale effect and fossil curse hypothesis in the relationship between financial development and carbon emission, and heterogeneous effects in economic integration and carbon emission. We further document that financial development, fossil fuel consumption, urban population, affluence (economic growth), and government final consumption expenditure spur environmental pollution while economic integration reduces it. This study recommends Peru to instill environmental justice through regulations and policies restricting inflows into an exploration of environmentally unsustainable projects within Peruvian metropolises or in the Peruvian Amazon. There is a need to revisit finance and investment laws and increase investment in low-carbon infrastructure within Peru. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Amazon is an important reservoir of biodiversity and carbon but it is under pressure by multiple threats such as artisanal and small‐scale gold mining (ASGM). In Peru ASGM has degraded 90,000 ha of old‐growth forest since the eighties, leaving vast areas as wastelands. As most ASGM in the region is illegal, efforts to recover degraded areas have been scant. Here we assessed the potential of Stylosanthes guianensis to recover soil health as a first step in the restoration of gold mine spoils in a Native community and a mining concession in Madre de Dios, Peru. We evaluated plant growth and analyzed changes in physical, chemical, and biological soil parameters. After 470 days from sowing, the average plant height was 46.7 cm with a survival rate >50% and yields of 23.9 t ha−1 and 450 kg ha−1 of dry biomass and nitrogen, respectively. Multiple soil parameters increased significantly, including cationic exchange capacity (3.3 to 4.0 cmol [+] kg−1), soil organic matter (0.03% to 0.39%), soil respiration (0.02 to 0.06 mg CO2 g−1 d−1) and biomass (0.03 to 0.15 mg C g−1). Soil macrofauna increased from 2 to 11 taxonomic groups, including ants, considered as soil engineers. Furthermore, S. guianensis increased soil carbon sequestration of impacted areas from 0.004 t C ha−1 by more than 1650%, up to 0.07 t C ha−1. These promising findings clearly illustrate S. guianensis potential to kick‐start natural succession of Amazonian forests after degradation by ASGM and hence help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shared practices of corporate social responsibility with local stakeholders is one of the few relevant experiences that are undertaken to contribute to sustainable development in a mining context of high social complexity. This study characterises the relationships with local stakeholders that allow them to carry out shared practices of Corporate Social Responsibility in the district of Pataz, La Libertad Region, in the north of Peru, through two case studies and data collection that included 23 local stakeholders working with the Mining Company. This applied research included interviews and participatory observation. The findings indicated that 80% of local entrepreneurs have shown their interest in carrying out shared practices of corporate social responsibility in education, environment, health, water and sanitation, respectively. The study describes the contribution of artisanal mining enterprises and local supplier enterprises in shared practices of social responsibility, within the locations where they carry out their business activities. This research enriches knowledge of experiences that promote a shared culture of corporate social responsibility and how attending to the social demands from the perspective of the local community and business risks from the perspective of the mining company. These two sometimes conflicting perspectives coexist and complement one another for corporate sustainability after overcoming certain local and corporate paradigms which facilitates contributing to the sustainable development of the surrounding communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]