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As a global strategy for mitigating climate change, organic amendments play critical roles in restoring stocks in carbon (C) depleted soils, preserving existing stocks to prevent further soil organic carbon (SOC) loss, and enhancing C sequestration. However, recent emerging evidence of a significant proportion of micro- and nanoplastics (M/NPs) occurrence in most organic substrates (e.g., compost manure, farmyard manure, and sewage sludge) compromises its role in climate change mitigation. Given the predicted surge of soil M/NPs proliferation in the coming years, we argued whether organic amendment remains a reliable climate change mitigation strategy. Toxicity effects of M/NPs influx within the soil matrix disrupt plants and their associated key microbial taxa responsible for crucial biogeochemical processes and restructuring of SOC, leading to increasing emissions of potent greenhouse gases (GHGs, e.g., CO 2 , CH 4 , and N 2 O) that feedback to aggravate the rapidly changing climate. Here, we summarize evidence based on literature that the discovery of M/NPs in organic substrates compromises its role in the climate change mitigation strategy. We briefly discuss the overview of synthetic fertilizers and their impact on SOC and atmospheric emissions. We discuss the role of organic amends in climate change mitigation and the emergence of M/NPs in it. We discuss M/NPs-induced damages to SOC and subsequent emissions of GHGs. We briefly highlight management approaches to clean organic substrates of M/NPs to improve their use in agrosystems and provide recommendations for future research studies. We found that organic amendment plays pivotal role in modulating the biotic and abiotic drivers responsible for climate mitigation. However, M/NPs in organic amendments weaken the regulatory mechanisms of organic amendments in plant-soil systems. We conclude that organic amendments of soils are critical for restoring SOC and mitigating the rapidly changing climate; yet, the discovery of M/NPs in organic substrates put their usage in a dilemma., 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.)

In 1945 the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) chose its Latin motto 'fiat panis' which translates as 'let there be bread' to prevent an unprecedented health catastrophe as a result of endemic hunger and poor nutritional health. Despite the long standing effort in this regard, for so many people, especially in developing economies in sub-Saharan Africa, access to enough, good quality, and constant supply of food and water remains an affront to good nutritional health. Globally, the FAO reports that 815 million people representing 10% of the population worldwide are currently undernourished. Our study investigates the effect of sustainable food production on malnutrition across sub-Saharan African countries. An ensemble of more sophisticated econometric models is applied to dynamic cross-country panel data from 16 countries in the 4 regions in Sub-Saharan African. Our study is innovative because it makes a pioneering contribution to the available stock of literature on indicators of sustainable food production and malnutrition which is still at an embryonic stage. We note that even though sub-Sahara African has a large tract of arable land, it negatively contributes towards malnutrition. We observed a positive and statistically significant relationship between food production (crop and livestock) and agricultural labour on malnutrition. Policy recommendations have been proposed to improve higher nutritional health through food production., (© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The paper specifically looks at the rural-urban interaction and contribution of various entities or agents to the total employment in China, rural China, and urban China. The study concentrated on the total employment after 1978 reforms. The paper looked at the 1978-2004 reform and after 2004 reform. It was revealed that 1978-2004 reform hindered the flow of labor from rural to urban but after 2004 reform promoted the flow of labor force from rural to urban China the development, which resulted in a drastic reduction in the rural labor force. Before the reforms, state- and collective-owned units were the only entities that were employing people in China. Even though private enterprises were allowed after the reforms, the leading role of the state- and collective-owned units persist. State-owned units contribute immensely to the total employment in China and urban employment, but its contribution to employment in rural China is negative. Collective-owned and cooperative units show a positive contribution to employment in rural areas but its contribution to the total employment in China is negative. Units with funds from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan and rural private enterprises also contribute positively to total employment in China. Cooperative units, joint holding corporations Ltd., foreign-funded units, and rural self-employed individuals contribute negatively to the total employment in China. Collective-owned and cooperative units contribute negatively to employment in the urban areas. Urban and rural private enterprises and rural self-employed individuals contribute positively to urban employment.

This study investigates the role of international trade in mitigating carbon dioxide emission as a nation economically advances. This study disaggregated the international trade into total exports and total imports. A multivariate model framework was estimated for the time series data for the period of 1970-2014. The quantile regression detected all the essential relationship, which hitherto, the traditional ordinary least squares could not capture. A cointegration relationship was confirmed using the Johansen cointegration model. The findings of the Granger causality revealed the presence of a uni-directional Granger causality running from energy consumption to economic growth; from import to economic growth; from imports to exports; and from urbanisation to economic growth, exports and imports. Our study established the presence of long-run relationships amongst carbon dioxide emission, economic growth, energy consumption, imports, exports and urbanisation. A bootstrap method was further utilised to reassess the evidence of the Granger causality, of which the results affirmed the Granger causality in the long run. This study confirmed a long-run N-shaped relationship between economic growth and carbon emission, under the estimated cubic environmental Kuznet curve framework, from the perspective of China. The recommendation therefore is that China as export leader should transform its trade growth mode by reducing the level of carbon dioxide emission and strengthening its international cooperation as it embraces more environmental protectionisms.