The world food price crisis in 2007/08 has aroused worldwide attention to the global food price volatility and food self-sufficiency issues. This paper modelled the entire environment of food production and transaction from a holistic view by a Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus in order to reveal the hidden connections related to the food self-sufficiency issue, including the interdependencies of food production with its restraining factors (hybrid energy, hybrid water), other production sectors, and international exchanges.
Our study illustrates how consumer social risk footprints can assist in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Combining the Social Hotspots Database (SHDB) and the Eora global multi-regional input-output table, we use input-output analysis to calculate a consumer social risk footprint (SF) of nations’ imports.
Marine plastic pollution has been a growing concern for decades. Single-use plastics (plastic bags and microbeads) are a significant source of this pollution. Although research outlining environmental, social, and economic impacts of marine plastic pollution is growing, few studies have examined policy and legislative tools to reduce plastic pollution, particularly single-use plastics (plastic bags and microbeads). This paper reviews current international market-based strategies and policies to reduce plastic bags and microbeads.
Using newly-released and globally available high-resolution remote sensing data on forest loss, we update the assessment of the cross-country determinants of deforestation in developing countries. We validate most of the major determinants found in the previous literature, generally based on earlier time-periods, except for the role of institutional quality. Agricultural trade, hitherto relatively neglected, is found to be one of the main factors causing deforestation.
Global food security is a priority for the future development agenda of the United Nations. Given the high dependence of the modern global food production system on the continuous supply of commercial phosphorus (P) fertilizers, the goal of achieving global food security could be hampered by any form of paucity of the global P resource. P is a finite, non-substitutable, non-renewable, and geographically restricted resource. The anthropogenic influences on this critical resource are likely to pose a number of challenges to its sustainability.
