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This study delves into the dynamics of China's environmental and trade policies and their impact on environmental sustainability over the period spanning from 1998 to 2022. Employing the autoregressive distributed lag methodology for empirical analysis, our investigation reveals distinctive patterns in policy outcomes. First and foremost, our research illuminates the affirmative role of environmental policy in fostering environmental sustainability. The observed negative effect of environmental policy on carbon dioxide emissions underscores its efficacy in mitigating environmental degradation. In contrast, our findings bring to light the counteractive influence of trade policy on environmental sustainability. The positive effect of trade policy on carbon dioxide emissions signals potential challenges emanating from heightened trade openness concerning environmental preservation. Furthermore, our study elucidates the complex interplay involving information and communication technology, financial development, and fossil energy consumption and their implications for environmental sustainability. The discernible positive effects of these factors on carbon dioxide emissions underscore the need for policy alignment with environmental sustainability objectives. In sum, our research contributes to an enhanced comprehension of the intricate relationship between policy interventions, technological facets, and environmental outcomes within the context of China. These insights bear significance for policymakers and stakeholders striving to navigate the multifaceted landscape of economic growth and ecological preservation in China. Balancing these imperatives is central to achieving lasting environmental sustainability., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This study examines how business, financial, monetary, and trade freedom influence Turkiye's green growth from 1995 to 2022, utilizing the ARDL approach to cointegration. Our results confirm the long-term cointegration among the variables. Robustness tests, such as Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS), consistently show that business and trade freedom hinder Turkiye's green growth. Financial freedom and monetary freedom consistently foster it. Business freedom and heightened trade freedom lead to increased fossil fuel consumption, whereas monetary freedom stabilizes Turkiye's currency, and financial freedom promotes entrepreneurship. Enhancing eco-friendly energy sources and investing in green technologies are crucial for promoting sustainable growth, reducing production costs, fostering entrepreneurship, and encouraging competition. The fact that the impact of these variables on green growth in Turkiye has not been studied before makes the study's findings novel., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

With the increasing importance of environmental and economic sustainability concerns, the concept of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) has gained significant attention. In the era of digitalization, a research approach called carbon sentiment analysis has emerged as an innovative method. This study aims to explore the connections between carbon sentiment, ESG, and corporate sustainable growth within the context of the green economy. By using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis and establishing a panel data model of ESG performance and sustainable growth for Chinese listed companies, a notable positive correlation between the two variables was observed. Endogeneity was addressed using the two-stage instrumental variable method (2SLS) and the dynamic panel Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) model, with the results remaining robust both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Carbon-related news and textual information were collected and analyzed using advanced deep learning methods in Natural Language Processing (NLP), specifically Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models. This analysis enabled sentiment analysis and identification of the sentiment orientation of carbon news. The obtained sentiment scores were then integrated with company data to establish a moderation effect model. The findings of the study reveal that carbon sentiment significantly and positively moderates ESG performance in relation to corporate sustainable growth. Furthermore, the construction of a mediation effect model showed that carbon sentiment can moderate ESG performance by reducing environmental uncertainty, enhancing social trust, and alleviating financing constraints, thereby influencing corporate sustainable growth. The results of the heterogeneity group regression analysis demonstrate that the impact of ESG performance driven by carbon sentiment on sustainable growth is more pronounced in carbon market pilot regions, non-heavily polluting industries, and labor-intensive industries. This research provides a fresh perspective for understanding the dynamics of ESG, online carbon sentiment, and their implications for corporate sustainable growth. Additionally, it contributes to the development of the green economy and the formulation of environmental management policies., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Waste of any origin is one of the most serious global and man-made concerns of our day. It causes climate change, environmental degradation, and human health problems. Proper waste management practices, including waste reduction, safe handling, and appropriate treatment, are essential to mitigate these consequences. It is thus essential to implement effective waste management strategies that reduce waste at the source, promote recycling and reuse, and safely dispose of waste. Transitioning to a circular economy with policies involving governments, industries, and individuals is essential for sustainable growth and waste management. The review focuses on diverse kinds of environmental waste sources around the world, such as residential, industrial, commercial, municipal services, electronic wastes, wastewater sewerage, and agricultural wastes, and their challenges in efficiently valorizing them into useful products. It highlights the need for rational waste management, circularity, and sustainable growth, and the potential of a circular economy to address these challenges. The article has explored the role of thermophilic microbes in the bioremediation of waste. Thermophiles known for their thermostability and thermostable enzymes, have emerged to have diverse applications in biotechnology and various industrial processes. Several approaches have been explored to unlock the potential of thermophiles in achieving the objective of establishing a zero-carbon sustainable bio-economy and minimizing waste generation. Various thermophiles have demonstrated substantial potential in addressing different waste challenges. The review findings affirm that thermophilic microbes have emerged as pivotal and indispensable candidates for harnessing and valorizing a range of environmental wastes into valuable products, thereby fostering the bio-circular economy., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Financial deepening is important in resource allocation for more productive enterprises, leading to sustainable green growth. Moreover, rapid development in the digital economy and export diversification significantly affect green growth. From this perspective, our study explores the impact of financial deepening, ICT development, and export diversification on green growth in China's economies from 1996 to 2021. The study explores the linkage between financial deepening, ICT development, export diversification, and green growth by employing the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) approach. The results obtained in the long run are as follows: positive shock in financial deepening brings positive change in green growth, whereas negative shock in financial deepening reduces green growth. In the long run, positive shock in ICT enhances green growth, but negative shock in ICT does not impact green growth. Moreover, positive shock in export diversification brings positive change in green growth, whereas negative shock in export diversification reports an insignificant impact on green growth. Based on findings, it is suggested that financial deepening, ICT development, and export diversification are conducive to sustainable green growth., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The establishment of green finance reform and innovation (GFRI) pilot zone is an important measure of the Chinese government to urge enterprises to develop green transformation. This paper explores the impact of pilot policies in the GFRI pilot zone on corporate environmental investment. Based on 819 A-share listed enterprises from 2010 to 2020, our staggered difference-in-differences (staggered DID) estimation documents revealed that enterprises in the GFRI pilot zone significantly increased the corporate environmental investment efficiency but reduced the scale of corporate environmental investment.This conclusion remained robust after Propensity Scores Matching difference-in-differences (PSM-DID), replacing dependent variables, and shortening the time window. We contend that the increased research and development (R&D) expenditure and technological innovation are the potential mechanisms at work. Heterogeneity analysis showed that the establishment of GFRI improved the environmental investment efficiency of polluting enterprises but had no effect on green enterprises.Meanwhile, the effect of GFRI exhibited heterogeneity in the type of enterprise ownership. This paper evaluates the implementation effect of GFRI from the perspective of corporate environmental investment, and provides theoretical support and an empirical basis for green finance policy to serve China's green economy., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Yang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Promoting the development of green finance (GF) is a critical way to address the environmental and developmental problems in China. While existing studies have examined the macroscopic role of GF, few pay attention to its impact on micro-enterprises. To investigate the effect of GF on micro-enterprises, this study considers green credit as a quasi-natural experiment to investigate the effect on firms' green total factor productivity (GTFP). We use the SBM-Malmquist method to measure firms' GTFP and adopt the double dual machine learning approach to explore its impact and potential mechanisms. The findings indicate that (1) the GF can effectively promote the GTFP at the firm level, which has been reconfirmed by robustness tests. (2) The GF can improve firms' GTFP through three pathways: promoting firms' green innovation, alleviating financing constraints, and strengthening managers' environmental concerns. (3). The heterogeneity analysis verifies that state-owned enterprises and large-size firms are more sensitive to the response of green finance. The results of this study lend support to the establishment of green finance and the formulation of corporate green development strategies., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Cities across the globe are driving systemic change in social and ecological systems by accelerating the rates of interactions and intensifying the links between human activities and Earth's ecosystems, thereby expanding the scale and influence of human activities on fundamental processes that sustain life. Increasing evidence shows that cities not only alter biodiversity, they change the genetic makeup of many populations, including animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms. Urban-driven rapid evolution in species traits might have significant effects on socially relevant ecosystem functions such as nutrient cycling, pollination, water and air purification and food production. Despite increasing evidence that cities are causing rapid evolutionary change, current urban sustainability strategies often overlook these dynamics. The dominant perspectives that guide these strategies are essentially static, focusing on preserving biodiversity in its present state or restoring it to pre-urban conditions. This paper provides a systemic overview of the socio-eco-evolutionary transition associated with global urbanization. Using examples of observed changes in species traits that play a significant role in maintaining ecosystem function and resilience, I propose that these evolutionary changes significantly impact urban sustainability. Incorporating an eco-evolutionary perspective into urban sustainability science and planning is crucial for effectively reimagining the cities of the Anthropocene. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis'.

Modern humanity has changed the biosphere at a global scale, threatening its own sustainability. It is claimed that through technology humans maximize the extraction of energy from the natural system towards their own benefit, with rates of appropriation that surpass the time-scales for systemic adaptation. This time-decoupled coevolutionary dynamic is at the core of human societal unsustainability. Here, we developed in silico experiments of an open energy-based flowing network toy model of natural systems and study the effects that greedy evolutionary strategies, resembling human societal demands, have upon the performance and scarcity tolerance of the system. We aim to determine the flexibility that those biased evolutionary dynamics have for matching or surpassing natural evolution outcomes. We studied four different indexes of system's growth and development (total system throughflow (TST), average mutual information, ascendency and entropy difference) and compare their scarcity tolerance and performance outcomes with respect to four different greedy scenarios. The results showed that greedy strategies rarely surpassed the tolerance and performance achieved by natural systemic evolution. The nature of the greedy scenarios developed were closely related to increases in TST and therefore, we emphasized this comparison. Here, the maximum percentage of greedy networks capable of surpassing natural dynamics was around one-third (approx. [Formula: see text]). However, results suggest the existence of a space parameter where local increases of energy flow can outperform the outcomes of natural systemic evolution, but no evident network property seems to characterize those greedy networks. A mild inverse relationship was found between the number of links that greedy nodes have towards the output and their capacity to outpass the control evolution. As many of the human societal effect upon biospheric processes have dissipative byproducts, knowing that such dynamics might diminish the systems tolerance and performance suggest care in their (ab)use. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis'.

The rapid, human-induced changes in the Earth system during the Anthropocene present humanity with critical sustainability challenges. Social-ecological systems (SES) research provides multiple approaches for understanding the complex interactions between humans, social systems, and environments and how we might direct them towards healthier and more resilient futures. However, general theories of SES change have yet to be fully developed. Formal evolutionary theory has been applied as a dynamic theory of change of complex phenomena in biology and the social sciences, but rarely in SES research. In this paper, we explore the connections between both fields, hoping to foster collaboration. After sketching out the distinct intellectual traditions of SES research and evolutionary theory, we map some of their terminological and theoretical connections. We then provide examples of how evolutionary theory might be incorporated into SES research through the use of systems mapping to identify evolutionary processes in SES, the application of concepts from evolutionary developmental biology to understand the connections between systems changes and evolutionary changes, and how evolutionary thinking may help design interventions for beneficial change. Integrating evolutionary theory and SES research can lead to a better understanding of SES changes and positive interventions for a more sustainable Anthropocene. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis'.

The rationalization of land resource utilization, affected by increasing stringent guidance of urban land supply regulations, is a vital path for countries to achieve their sustainable development goals. However, evidence on environmental effects of land supply regulations is scarce. Thus, adopting China's land supply policy, we investigate the impact of land supply admittance regulations (LSARs) on urban carbon emissions (UCEs) by using the land market transaction data and carbon emission data of China's 285 cities from 2007 to 2019. The result shows that LSARs notably curb UCEs, with UCEs decreasing by 0.051 standard units (approximately 1.052 g CO 2 per RMB) for each 1 standard unit increase in LSARs. After introducing the instrumental variable to deal with endogenous issues, this conclusion remains robust. Mechanism analysis indicates that the carbon abatement effect of LSARs is through structural and efficiency two main channels: the industrial structure advancement from quantity and quality; the green production efficiency from scale and technology. Furthermore, heterogeneity results demonstrate that the reduction effect varies in admittance regulations setting, government intervention, land supply marketization, and environmental regulations. Our findings provide valuable insights for other economies seeking to adopt land-based policy instruments for carbon governance and urban sustainability., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

In recent years, the international community is struggling to achieve sustainable economic and environmental goals. Despite of the large literature, the impact of blue economy on sustainable growth and environment is missing, for the case of Saudi Arabia. The current study incorporates the energy, green, and blue indicators to examine the impact on sustainable goals of Saudi Arabia. For econometric estimations, we use the nonlinear ARDL approach to estimate the full sample and post-Vision 2030 sample. The findings confirm that blue economic activities are not mature enough to participate its role to achieve sustainable targets of Saudi Vision 2030. The outcomes of current study depict that blue indicators are neglected to attain sustainable economic and environmental goals. In view of econometric outcomes, we propose that Saudi Arabia have to emphasize on sea trade and ocean tourism. Moreover, the findings are useful to estimate the sustainable targets of Saudi Vision 2030., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Competing Interests: Disclosure The following authors disclosed financial relationships: S. D. Crockett: Clinical trial agreements with Guardant, Exact Sciences, and Freenome. L. V. Hernandez: Stock options in Iterative Health and Liquiglide. H. Pohl: Research support from Steris and Cosmo; advisory board for InterVenn. All other authors disclosed no financial relationships.

Background: Global food systems are failing adolescents. Poor diet quality driving malnutrition among adolescents around the world and the quality of foods eaten by adolescents not only determines their health and development, but also is the foundation of thriving communities. The present study aimed to engage adolescents across low-income, middle-income and high-income countries to determine their lived experience of food, food systems and the challenges they face within their food systems., Methods: The study used the Distributed Data Generation method pioneered by the Young and Resilient Research Centre, at Western Sydney University, to conduct workshops with adolescents aged 10-19 years across the globe in collaboration with UNICEF. Participatory workshops were designed to capture qualitative data on adolescents lived experiences and perspectives of their food systems, food sustainability and food security, and how improvements can be made. Thematic analysis was undertaken to analyse qualitative data. Descriptive statistics were generated for demographic data captured., Results: Six hundred and forty adolescents across 18 countries participated. Three key themes emerged, which included experiences of food, challenges to food systems and strengthening food systems. Adolescents saw potential in empowering communities to create change and contribute to food system transformation. Adolescents called for inclusion in decision-making from local food practice to large global policy development., Conclusions: The study results demonstrated how adolescents experience their food systems and want to see sustainable change, although they also want to be a part of the change. Adolescents described that there needs to be an active choice to work with them, listen to their lived experience and across all levels of society strengthen food systems. To achieve this, adolescents need to be involved in decision-making around their food systems for a sustainable future., (© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Dietetic Association.)

While the negative environmental, social and health impacts of the current food system have been acknowledged and evidenced for several decades, the recent and current transformations in food systems at diverse scales are not yet addressing the many inter-related stakes at play. Due to the much wider set of interactions in this consumption-production system, new conceptual tools are required for understanding and assessing sustainability transitions and what prevents them. The article will draw on the cases of France and the UK to examine these countries' national food systems' historical trajectories and suggest a periodization of these in order to reveal common characteristics and differences. This will show that despite common major trends and common transition or inertia mechanisms, pathways differ, especially from the 1990s, due to different configurations of power relationships between the state, economic actors and civil society in a context of an increasing competition between sustainability narratives that leads to an increasing fragmentation in food systems. It will lead us to join the recent progress in the sustainability transitions' community towards a shift in the analysis from a focus on niches' trajectories and effects to a deeper focus on power configurations and competing narratives, as well as to suggest a larger inclusion of socio-ecological and spatial dimensions.

Research, like any other sector, has an effect on climate and is exposed for waste both societal and economic. There is evidence for possible improvements when keeping focus on study design, patient inclusion, transport, and reporting. However, there is a need for further national and international research. Sustainability is incorporated as a quality domaine in the United Kingdom and we will probably see the same development in Denmark, as argued in this review., (Published under Open Access CC-BY-NC-BD 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.)

Urbanization has degraded ecosystem services on a global scale, and cities are vulnerable to long-term stresses and risks exacerbated by climate change. Green infrastructure (GI) has been increasingly implemented in cities to improve ecosystem functions and enhance city resilience, yet GI degradation or failure is common. Biochar has been recently suggested as an ideal substrate additive for a range of GI types due to its favorable properties; however, the generality of biochar benefits the GI ecosystem function, and the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we present a global meta-analysis and synthesis and demonstrate that biochar additions pervasively benefit a wide range of ecosystem functions on GI. Biochar applications were found to improve substrate water retention capacity by 23% and enhance substrate nutrients by 12-31%, contributing to a 33% increase in plant total biomass. Improved substrate physicochemical properties and plant growth together reduce discharge water volume and improve discharge water quality from GI. In addition, biochar increases microbial biomass on GI by ∼150% due to the presence of biochar pores and enhanced microbial growth conditions, while also reducing CO 2 and N 2 O emissions. Overall results suggest that biochar has great potential to enhance GI ecosystem functions as well as urban sustainability and resilience.

Competing Interests: Conflicts of interest: We have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and have no conflicts of interest to declare. Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

Digital finance is an innovative financial model of great significance for sustainable economic growth. By constructing indicators of sustainable economic growth, we explore the impact of digital finance on sustainable economic growth using the fixed effect model, mediating effect model, threshold regression model, and dynamic spatial Dubin model. The study finds that digital finance can drive sustainable economic growth, and the robustness and endogenous treatment results strongly verify this. Digital finance promotes sustainable growth mainly through technological innovation. In addition, with technological innovation and the development of renewable energy, there is a significant nonlinear relationship between digital finance and sustainable economic growth. Finally, the spatial spillover effect results show that digital finance's impact on sustainable economic growth has a positive effect, whether it is a direct effect or an indirect effect. This article provides possible ideas for digital finance to promote sustainable economic growth., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Over time, the economy's growth, financial development, and environmental taxes have become vital tools in countering ecological degradation and promoting clean energy. However, there needs to be a research gap in assessing these policies' collective impact on renewable energy adoption, especially in developing West African countries. This study addresses this gap by evaluating the effectiveness of these policies from 1990 to 2020, using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), fixed effect, and pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) models. The Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality test reveals bidirectional causality between economic growth and renewable energy consumption, as well as between financial development and renewable energy use. Unidirectional causality is found from environmental tax to renewable energy consumption. GMM results highlight the positive influences of economic growth and environmental taxes on renewable energy consumption, while financial development negatively affects it. These outcomes are consistent with fixed effect and pooled OLS models. Sectorial heterogeneity analysis indicates better results for countries with strong institutions, advanced technology, and strict regulations. In conclusion, this study's insights can guide policies for sustainability in West Africa, leveraging economic growth, environmental taxes, and technology for effective renewable energy integration., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Aim: Active transportation referring to non-motorized modes of transport is promoted and popularized both in practice and in the scientific literature, while their use for urban freight transport has been largely neglected. Thus the main scope of the paper is to indicate the development potential of micromobility use in urban freight transport and to check its influence on urban sustainability., Methods: The authors have hypothesized that active means of transport, with a focus on micromobility, have great development potential in freight transportation in cities. The implemented methods for analyzing the relationship between users' characteristics, micromobility, and its impact on urban sustainable development, were logit and probit modelling. The authors' system includes an analysis of factors connected with the topics of sustainability and micromobilty, that have met an essential scientific gap that this paper addresses. Logistic (logit) regression is used mainly for binary, ordinal, and multi-level outcomes to find the probability of success (i.e. occurrence of some event). Probit regression, however, is primarily used in binary response models and assumes the normal distribution of data., Results: The main finding of the article has led the authors to the statement that active means of transport, including micromobility have great development potential in freight transportation in cities., Conclusions: Knowledge of the acceptance of micromobility solutions is essential for municipal authorities in shaping the development of urban transport systems. Thus proper strategies and actions need to be prioritized to leverage the sustainability-related co-benefits of active transport., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Rześny-Cieplińska et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Climate and environmental changes require primary care physicians to adapt their practices. This article presents resources and actions contributing to reduce the impact of medical practice by implementing the CanMEDS competences in an environmental perspective., Competing Interests: Les auteurs n’ont déclaré aucun conflit d’intérêts en relation avec cet article.

Urban and peri-urban forests greatly contribute to the well-being of urban dwellers in West Africa. However, increasing urban densification and spatial expansion negatively affect the functioning of urban ecosystems. Therefore, highlighting the negative impacts of land use change on the ecological attributes of urban landscapes is fundamental for sustainable urban planning. This study aimed to assess the impacts of land use on woody species diversity, structure and carbon storage in peri-urban areas in Burkina Faso. Forest inventories were conducted in 167 plots across two peri-urban forests and their adjacent agroforestry systems. We found a total diversity of 91 woody species representing 69 genera and 26 families. Diversity indices were significantly higher (p-value < 0.0001) in the peri-urban forests than in the agroforestry systems, highlighting a negative impacts of land use on tree diversity. Besides, peri-urban forests had significantly lower tree diameter (15.749 ± 9.194 cm), but higher basal area (5.030 ± 4.407 m 2 . ha -1 ) and denser stands (317.308 ± 307.845 ind. ha -1 ) compared to the agroforestry systems. Tree aboveground biomass was significantly higher (p-value < 0.0001) in the peri-urban forests (18.198 ± 23.870 Mg. ha -1 ) than in the agroforestry systems (7.821 ± 6.544 Mg. ha -1 ). Multivariate analyses revealed that denser stands hold higher diversity in peri-urban areas, and that stand basal area mostly drives carbon storage than tree density and diversity. These findings highlight the potential of peri-urban forests to conserve plant biodiversity and mitigate climate change. The study advocates for a sustainable urban land use and planning., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

Urban sustainability and sustainable mobility have become the central focus of sustainable development initiatives. The city of 15 models seeks to ensure that urban development is sustainable. This paper evaluates the current state of mobility and the use of sustainable transport in the specific context of the city of Antofagasta, which, due to its characteristics of urban expansion and its mining activity, has been considered an international reference case. In particular, we study how the current urban structure shapes the city's travel patterns and identify opportunities for public policy actions to focus their investment and urban intervention efforts on the essential aspects that make it possible to achieve 15- or 20-min territories. The results reveal the need for urban development initiatives to focus on improving the supply of goods and services in areas with low installed capacity, promoting the culture of micro-neighbourhoods, and encouraging cycling. In particular, only 10% of trips, for all purposes and all modes of transport, are completed in less than 15 min. And about 58% of trips, for all purposes and all modes, are completed in less than 30 min. In the marginal effects of the multinomial logit model, a one-unit increase in travel time increases the probability of choosing to travel by public transport by 63% and decreases the probability of walking by 41%., (© 2023. The New York Academy of Medicine.)

Threats to the health of our environment are numerous. Much research in science and engineering is devoted to documenting, understanding, and attempting to mitigate the harm itself. The root challenge for sustainability, however, is human behavior. As such, changes to human behaviors and the internal processes that drive them are also essential. Critical to understanding sustainability-related behaviors is the individual's conceptualization of the natural world and its components and processes. The papers in this topiCS issue address these conceptualizations by drawing from anthropological, linguistic, educational, philosophical, and social cognitive perspectives as well as traditional psychological approaches to the study of concepts and their development in children. They engage with many domains bearing on environmental sustainability including climate change, biodiversity, land and water conservation, resource use, and design of the built environment. They coalesce around four broad themes: (a) What people know (or believe) about nature broadly and about specific aspects of nature, and how they acquire and use this knowledge; (b) how knowledge is expressed and shared via language; (c) how knowledge and beliefs interact with affective, social, and motivational influences to yield attitudes and behaviors; and (d) how members of different cultures and speakers of different languages differ in these ways. The papers also point to lessons for advancing sustainability via public policy and public messaging, education, conservation and nature management, and design of the built environment., (© 2023 Cognitive Science Society LLC.)

Learning to accept and understand our identity as inhabitants of planet Earth is an essential aspect of living sustainably in a global community with others. What is involved in learning, that despite what divides us, we are first and foremost Earthlings and that the well-being of our planetary home is in our collective hands? What are the cognitive features of concepts that are inherent to thinking like an Earthling? This article considers themes that arise from research that inform what is involved in developing a collective, planetary perspective as it relates to engaging in environmental sustainability. It samples research on how young people understand and reason about agency-their own and that of others-and about the relationship between individual and collective action. It considers the importance of recognizing and engaging with diverse perspectives on agency and collectivity as well as being able to adopt the perspectives of those in different roles and positions. While many of the concepts that are inherent to thinking as part of a collective community of Earthlings are challenging, many are also learnable and represent important instructional targets for helping the next generation to understand how to live together in sustainable ways on a small and finite planet., (© 2023 Cognitive Science Society LLC.)

Objective: To synthesize knowledge about hospital sustainability indicators and evidence of reduced socio-environmental impact., Method: Literature scoping review using Pubmed, Science Direct, Scielo and Lilacs databases. Studies in a time frame of 10 years, addressing hospital sustainability indicators and evidence of reduced socio-environmental impact published in any language were included., Results: A total of 28 articles were included, most were applied research, published in 2012, in English. Studies showed ways to save water and energy, as well as ways to monitor and mitigate the impact of activities related to effluents, waste and emissions. All studies had nursing work directly or indirectly involved in hospital sustainability., Conclusion: The possibilities of generating less impact on the environment and increasing the economy/efficiency of a hospital are countless. The particularities of each hospital must be taken into account and workers, especially nurses, should be involved.

Environmental regulation is expected to stimulate green innovation for the promotion of urban sustainability, while the effectiveness of this stimulus has long been debated under the Porter hypothesis and the crowding out theory. Empirical studies under different contexts have not reached a consistent conclusion yet. Based on the data of 276 cities in China from 2003 to 2013, this study captures the spatiotemporal non-stationarity in the effects of environmental regulation on green innovation with the combination of Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression (GTWR) and Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithm. The results show that environmental regulation has an overall U-shape impact on green innovation, indicating that the Porter hypothesis and the crowding out theory are not in conflict, but are theoretical interpretations of different stages of local responses to environmental regulation. Specifically, the effects of environmental regulation on green innovation present to be diverse in patterns that include enhancing, stagnant, undermining, U-shape, and inverted U-shape. These contextualized relationships are shaped by local industrial incentives and innovation capacities of pursing green transformations. The spatiotemporal findings allow policymakers to better understand the multi-staged and geographically diverse impacts of environmental regulation on green innovations, and formulate targeted policies for different localities., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Competing Interests: Conflicts of interest S.T. is a director of VESTSO Ltd that developed the Healthcare Environmental Performance Tool. The other authors declare they have no conflicts of interest.

Background: Climate change is impacting the health of individuals worldwide. At the same time, the healthcare sector contributes to carbon emissions. In Australia, healthcare contributes 7% of the country's carbon footprint. Research into the environmental impact and mitigation of carbon emissions in primary care is an emerging area., Objective: To explore staff perspectives on facilitators and barriers to environmental sustainability in 3 Australian general practices seeking to reduce their environmental impact., Methods: We used a qualitative, case-study approach, conducting 23 semistructured interviews with staff across the 3 practices including nurses, administrative staff, and doctors. Observation of systems and staff behaviour relating to environmental sustainability was undertaken at 1 practice. Thematic analysis was conducted to determine themes relating to factors influencing the implementation of environmentally sustainable initiatives within practice settings., Results: Climate mitigation efforts raised by participants were largely focussed on energy and waste reduction, rather than prescribing pharmaceuticals and staff and patient transport. Three main factors influencing change towards sustainable practice were identified: "Leadership," "Staff Engagement and Workplace Culture," and "Concomitant Benefits." A leadership team and workplace culture that valued environmental sustainability were found to be important facilitators, as were concomitant benefits, in particular financial savings. Barriers included what interviewees described as a lack of knowledge about initiatives with the highest impact, lack of understanding described by staff of the evidence behind particular initiatives, waning staff engagement and infection control concerns., Conclusions: Our research highlights several important factors that contribute to the implementation of intended environmentally sustainable initiatives in these 3 practices. Further education, research and high-level policy guidance on the potential environmental impact of prescribing pharmaceuticals, staff and patient transport and unnecessary tests and treatments are recommended to further promote environmental sustainability in primary care., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press.)

Healthcare systems around the world are responding with increasing urgency to rapidly evolving ecological crises, most notably climate change. This Perspective considers how health economics and health economists can best contribute to protecting health and building sustainable healthcare systems in the face of these challenges., (© 2023 The Authors. Health Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The economic and environmental consequences of bad banking practices have aroused much attention. In China, banks are at the center of shadow banking activities through which they avoid regulation and support environmentally unfriendly businesses such as fossil fuel companies and other high-pollution enterprises. In this paper, we study the impact of bank's engagement in shadow banking activities on its sustainability by using annual panel data of Chinese commercial banks. The result shows that bank's engagement in shadow banking activities has a negative impact on its sustainability and the negative impact of bank's engagement in shadow banking activities is more pronounced for city commercial banks and unlisted banks which are less regulated and lack corporate social responsibility (CSR). Furthermore, we explore the underlying mechanism of our findings and prove that bank's sustainability is impeded because it transforms high-risk loan into shadow banking activities which are less regulated. Finally, by using difference-in-difference (DiD) approach, we find that bank's sustainability improved after the financial regulation on shadow banking activities. Our research provides empirical evidence that the financial regulation on bad banking practices is beneficial for bank's sustainability., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

To achieve the "Double Carbon" target, China is paying increasing attention to green building development. Thus, this study selected 26 regional green building development planning documents that have been put into practice since the implementation of the 14th Five-Year Plan and analyzed different development goals and common development barriers and paths presented in regional documents by conducting qualitative research. After the analysis of common goals and goals with regional characteristics, this study verified that spatial imbalances did exist in the development targets of green building in each region during the "14th Five-Year Plan", and the development priorities also varied from region to region. Due to the relation between development goals and the current situation, this study can also illustrate the spatial imbalances of the development situation between different regions. The results of this study can assist regional governments in gaining a clear self-positioning to judge whether they keep pace with the national development level of green buildings and encourage them to take measures to guarantee the stable development of green buildings.

This study aims to evaluate the impact of urban spatial expansion on the landscape patterns of coastal cities in Türkiye through the use of spatio-temporal indices. To this end, temporal samples covering a period of approximately 30 years (1986-2000 and 2000-2015) were analyzed for six selected coastal cities in Türkiye. The urban spatial growth patterns in these cities were characterized using 17 geospatial indices, and Pearson's correlation coefficient and principal component analysis were employed to assess the quantitative relationships between urban spatial development and the fragmentation of landscape networks. The results of the study demonstrated that the patterns of landscape fragmentation caused by the spatial growth patterns of the selected coastal cities can be divided into two categories: disconnected landscape connections and perforated landscape patterns. Leapfrog development was identified as a major factor in the fragmentation of landscape continuity, leading to the formation of perforated green structures. The findings of this research can serve as spatial guidelines for addressing disconnected landscapes, a crucial factor in enhancing urban sustainability in Türkiye's coastal cities. Furthermore, the outcomes of this study may be useful for informing the national well-being strategy for urban planning and natural mitigating policies in Türkiye's coastal regions., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

Inherited system features and challenges that can hinder urban planning initiatives must be taken into consideration before a path towards a sustainable future can be established. By putting the lock-in effect under scrutiny, it is possible to gain valuable insight to emphasize positive lock-ins and to prevent maladaptation and unsustainable solutions. This paper aims to review the current trends of urban studies regarding sustainability, resilience, and the lock-in effect, focusing on both hot topics and mutual integration by following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR protocol) and analyzing the top-cited articles on these topics from 2015 to 2021 in the Web of Science database. Based on the revised literature, the potential lock-ins of climate-friendly and sustainable urban development are not adequately discussed. Moreover, while urban sustainability and resilience are often treated as overlapping areas, there is a lack of publications that carefully examine their interlinked long-term perspectives for any hindering effects., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Background: The relationship between mobility and health has multiple dimensions, and the mobility model can be considered a public health intervention. Increasingly, mobility in cities is oriented towards incorporating sustainability criteria; however, there are many very diverse measures that cities carry out in terms of mobility and urban sustainability, and in many cases, these do not receive subsequent evaluation and/or study to analyse their effectiveness or impact. Currently, the literature does not offer any updated review of the measures applied in the different communities and countries., Aim: To carry out a panoramic review of the measures implemented in the last 5 years to analyse which ones report a greater effectiveness and efficiency in health., Results: After applying the exclusion criteria of the study, a total of 16 articles were obtained for evaluation. The measures applied in terms of sustainability are grouped into four subgroups and their subsequent evaluation and possible impact on public health is analysed., Conclusions: The present study found a large heterogeneous variety of sustainability measures in local settings around the world, which seem to reflect positive impacts on population health. However, subsequent evaluation of these measures is inconclusive in most cases. Further research and sharing across macro-communities are needed to establish universal criteria.

Globally, the challenges facing cities regarding urban decay, insufficient urban function, and fragmented urban development are enormous. Under this context, urban renewal provides opportunities to address these challenges and enhance urban sustainability. Thus, promoting urban renewal projects and improving their performance is a global topic. In many circumstances, urban renewal is planned and initiated on the project scale, but on the area scale, overall coordination of the projects can bring about comprehensive benefits to urban areas on a macro view. In practice, it still lacks a systematic evaluation approach to obtain a clear picture of such comprehensive benefits. In academia, the existing research studies are mainly focused on single-project evaluation. An integrated framework that provides a holistic assessment of area-scale project benefits is missing. Few fully consider the coupling coordination benefits between several urban renewal projects from an area-scale perspective. Thus, this paper aims to propose a framework for integrating an indicator evaluation system through a hybrid entropy weight method with Back Propagation (BP) neural network methods to evaluate the comprehensive benefit of urban renewal projects on the area scale, which is the level at which most development area-scale renewal projects take place in a city. The feasibility and effectiveness of this proposed framework are then verified in a case study of Chongqing, China. The results indicate that the proposed method that integrated multi-project characteristics can contribute to a bigger picture of benefit evaluation of urban renewal based on an area scale perspective. This therefore provides not only guidance for urban planners and policymakers to make better decisions, but also new insight for benefit evaluation in the field of urban development.

Since urban land use efficiency (ULUE) bridges urbanization and economic efficiency while ecological carrying capacity (ECC) is the basic natural endowments support, the coupling coordination degree (CCD) between ULUE and ECC represents a combination of resource-intensive and environment-friendly, which can serve as an effective tool to evaluate sustainable development. We first quantified ULUE and ECC by super-efficiency DEA, DPSIR framework, and entropy-TOPSIS from a coupling perspective, attempting to compensate for the lack of clarity regarding urban sustainability constraint factors in the holistic perspective. On this basis, we formulate an integrated coupling coordination analysis framework comprising temporal and spatial characteristics, disorder diagnosis and interaction mechanism to synthesize the current scattered research directions into a logically clear framework and serve as a guide for future research on coupling. Moreover, to extend the macroscopic mechanism to a microscopic level at a theoretical level and facilitate more effective and sustainable urban management practices, this paper highlights a detailed multi-stage coupling mechanism corresponding to different stages of urban development, deriving an urban sustainable development spiral upward model. The results indicated that the CCD between ULUE and ECC exhibits a significant clustering pattern accompanied by a spatial spillover effect, which was closely related to economic development level and natural resource endowment. Besides, the disorder factor in the eastern Jilin province was ULUE while the western was ECC. Furthermore, the ULUE will take precedence over ECC breaking the old balance, in which technological innovation is the internal driving factor. These findings also illustrate the analysis framework and coupling mechanism mentioned in this paper can act as a nexus between interdisciplinary perspectives to enhance our understanding of changing social-ecological systems, thus serving urban sustainable development., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Urban blue-green space (UBGS), as an important component of the urban environment, is found to closely relate to human health. An extensive understanding of the effects of UBGS on human health is necessary for urban planning and intervention schemes towards healthy city development. However, a comprehensive review and discussion of relevant studies using bibliometric methods is still lacking. This paper adopted the bibliometric method and knowledge graph visualization technology to analyze the research on the impact of UBGS on residents' health, including the number of published papers, international influence, and network characteristics of keyword hotspots. The key findings include: (1) The number of articles published between 2001 and 2021 shows an increasing trend. Among the articles collected from WoS and CNKI, 38.74% and 32.65% of the articles focus on physical health, 38.32% and 30.61% on mental health, and 17.06% and 30.61% on public health, respectively. (2) From the analysis of international partnerships, countries with high levels of economic development and urbanization have closer cooperation than other countries. (3) UBGS has proven positive effects on residents' physical, mental, and public health. However, the mediating effects of UBGS on health and the differences in the health effects of UBGS on different ages and social classes are less studied. Therefore, this study proposes several future research directions. First, the mediating effect of UBGS on health impacts should be further examined. Furthermore, the interactive effects of residents' behaviors and the UBGS environment should be emphasized. Moreover, multidisciplinary integration should be strengthened. The coupling mechanism between human behavior and the environment should also be studied in depth with the help of social perception big data, wearable devices, and human-computer interactive simulation. Finally, this study calls for developing health risk monitoring and early warning systems, and integrating health impact assessment into urban planning, so as to improve residents' health and urban sustainability.

Aim: To analyse the current scientific knowledge and research lines focused on environmentally sustainable health systems, including the role of nurses., Background: There seem to be differences between creating interventions focused on environmentally sustainable health systems, including nurses, and the scarcity of research on this topic, framed on the Sustainable Development Goals., Methods: A bibliometric analysis was carried out, via three databases (Web of Science, Scopus and Pubmed), and the guideline recommendations were followed to select bibliometric data., Results: The search resulted in 159 publications, significantly increasing the trends from 2017 to 2021 (p = .028). The most relevant countries in this area were the United States, the United Kingdom and Sweden. Also, the top articles were from relevant journals, indexed in Journal Citation Report, and the first and the second quartiles linked to the nursing field and citations (p < .001)., Conclusion: Education is key to achieving environmentally sustainable health systems via institutions and policies., Implications for Nursing Management: There is a lack of experimental data and policies on achieving or maintaining environmentally sustainable health care systems, indicating that nurses have an important role and should be consulted and included in decision-making policies regarding sustainability in the health care systems., (© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Nursing Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The rapid urbanization and over-crowded urban environment have caused a serious public health crisis. Numerous studies have found that public green spaces can benefit human health and well-being. Therefore, a short supply or an inappropriate planning of public green spaces would exaggerate the health crisis. For all these reasons, how to create health-promoting greenways in urban areas becomes a critical and pressing challenge for urban sustainability. To address this challenge, we conducted a photograph-survey study of a greenway to examine the relationship between place preference, perceived health benefit, and environmental perception. Through a set of linear regression analysis, we found that: place preference is significantly and positively associated with six specific perceptions, including relaxation when walking alone, cheering of one's mood, being away from daily life, traffic safety, recovery from stress, and mental fascination. Furthermore, we identified the important environmental perception elements that have significant positive or negative associations with each identified perception; these were carefully planned. This study is an initial effort to examine a critical urban land-use issue: appropriate planning of greenways in the city to promote public health and well-being. The research findings provide strong and clear guidance on planning strategies for urban greenways and shed light on future studies.

Urban waterbodies are one of the most pertinent issues involved in multiple aspects of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, waterbodies in large Chinese cities are highly vulnerable to urban-land expansion, which is mostly due to economic development, population growth, and rural-urban migration. In this work, we selected 159 Chinese cities of over one million in population to investigate the encroachment on waterbodies due to rapid urbanization from 1990 to 2018. Overall, 20.6% of natural waterbody area was lost during this period to urban expansion, and this fraction varied from city to city which was related to waterbody abundance. With the acceleration of urbanization, waterbody occupation is becoming more serious (P < 0.01). However, in all cities, this encroachment has eased since 2010, which justifies the effective implementation of national-scale policies to conserve urban waterbodies. Meanwhile, gains have occurred during urbanization, in addition to the loss of waterbodies. Especially, cities lacking waterbody placed a greater emphasis on ecological factors, whose urban waterbody areas showed an increasing trend. In the future, ecological resources, including waterbody, should be considered in urban planning to provide reasonable protection to waterbodies in the quest for urban sustainability., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Urbanization is a long-term global trend critical for shaping human-Earth sustainability in the Anthropocene. In past decades, much progress has been made in researching urban sustainability, particularly global assessments of the big picture and case studies of individual cities. Here we examine the world's top 100 urban agglomerations (UAs) in terms of size-that rank high on sustainability agendas and cover 28% of the global UA area-regarding four broadly concerned challenges: population shrinkage, slum development, greenness loss, and heat exposure. Instead of merely focusing on global/regional "averages" or individual cases, we take one step further to identify the "anomalies" of urban sustainability among the 100 UAs for each dimension and on the whole as multi-dimensional coupled infrastructure systems. Results show: (1) urban population of the 100 UAs increased by 36% during 2000-2020; (2) urban slums occurred in 85% of 34 examined UAs in the Global South; (3) urban greenness declined in the 100 UAs by 8% during 2000-2019; and (4) 79% of the 100 UAs were projected to have less than 30 EHDs per year during 2021-2030. Our findings provide global baselines for place-based problem-driven policymaking for the examined UAs and suggest improving urban green infrastructure as their top policy imperative. Our findings point to a critical research gap in the urban sustainability literature: Studying sustainability transitions of the "abnormally" sustainable UAs identified in this study that had exceptional performances on the four examined sustainability dimensions, e.g., Beijing of China and Milan of Italy., (Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Urbanization in sparsely populated areas is critical for sustainability. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a typical example of an ecologically fragile region that plays a crucial role in China's ecological safety and water resource protection. We use a social network analysis to illustrate the structure of the urban system on the plateau and find that the agglomeration and diffusion capabilities of the core nodes are weak, which presents an obstacle to the sustainable development of the urban system. Nevertheless, we find that the intermediate nodes-which serve multiple integration functions for the various cultures, ethnic groups, and religions in the region-are core nodes that divide the dispersed cities and towns into four subgroups that function as small worlds (The cities and towns within one subgroup connect closely and each subgroup is organized independently somehow from others). Based on this finding, we suggest implementing a "double-layer" urban system to promote the sustainable urban development of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. This "double-layer" system breaks the usual urbanization trend, in which cities grow in size and their distribution becomes more concentrated; instead it provides a feasible way to maintain urban sustainability in a sparsely populated area., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

The circular economy paradigm can be beneficial for urban sustainability by eliminating waste and pollution, by circulating products and materials and by regenerating nature. Furthermore, under an urban circular development scheme, environmental noise can be designed out. The current noise control policies and actions, undertaken at a source-medium-receiver level, present a linearity with minimum sustainability co-benefits. A circular approach in noise control strategies and in soundscape design could offer numerous ecologically related co-benefits. The global literature documenting the advantages of the implementation of circular economy in cities has highlighted noise mitigation as a given benefit. Research involving circular economy actions such as urban green infrastructure, green walls, sustainable mobility systems and electro-mobility has acknowledged reduced noise levels as a major circularity outcome. In this research paper, we highlight the necessity of a circularity and bioeconomy approach in noise control. To this end, a preliminary experimental noise modeling study was conducted to showcase the acoustic benefits of green walls and electric vehicles in a medium-sized urban area of a Mediterranean island. The results indicate a noise level reduction at 4 dB(A) when simulating the introduction of urban circular development actions.

Climate change and biodiversity loss are two pressing global environmental challenges that are tightly coupled to urban processes. Cities emit greenhouse gases through the consumption of materials and energy. Urban expansion encroaches on local habitats, while urban land teleconnections simultaneously degrade distant ecosystems. These processes decrease the supply of and increase the demand for ecosystem services inside and outside urban areas. Most cities are in a state of ecosystem services deficit, whereby demand exceeds local supply of ecosystem services. Methods to quantify this deficit by capturing multi-scale and multi-level ecological exchanges are incipient, leaving scholars with a partial understanding of the environmental impacts of cities. This paper deploys a novel method to simulate future urban supplies and demands of two key ecosystem services needed to combat climate change and biodiversity loss - global climate regulation and global habitat maintenance. Applying our model to eight representative European cities, we project growing ecosystems deficits (demand exceeds supply) between 8% and 214% in global climate regulation and 11% and 431% in global habitat maintenance between 2020 and 2050. Variation between cities stems from differing dietary patterns and electricity mixes, which have large implications for ecosystems outside the city. To combat these losses, urban sustainability strategies should complement local restoration with changes to local consumption alongside promoting remote ecological restoration to tackle the multi-level environmental impacts of cities., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare this work has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. The authors have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)