Anthropogenic occurring nanoparticles (NPs) have been one of the principal catalytic components of marine pollution throughout its history. The phosphogypsum (PG) factories present environmental risks and evident marine pollution in different parts of the world. Many of these factors continue to operate, however, some have already been abandoned by the private sector. The general objective of this manuscript is to analyze the real nanoparticles (NPs) present on a beach in southern Brazil to illustrate the need to create public policies and projects for environmental recovery. This work focused on real representative sampling of suspended sediments (SSs), and on a modern analytical procedure via advanced electron microscopes (field emission scanning electron microscope-FE-SEM and high resolution transmission electron microscope-HR-TEM coupled with an energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis system-EDS) to analyze NPs containing hazardous elements (HEs). The results presented in this work demonstrate who the size, morphology, among other physical-geochemical characteristics influence in the adsorption of HEs by the NPs and their respective agglomerates. This study is of great importance for carrying out the application of advanced techniques and methods to better understand the formation and transport of NPs on beaches, which allows assisting in the management of waste from plaster factories on a global scale.

This paper explores the governance characteristics of marine plastic debris, some of the factors underpinning its severity, and examines the possibility of harnessing corporate social responsibility (CSR) to manage plastic use within the contextual attitudes of a contemporary global society. It argues that international and domestic law alone are insufficient to resolve the “wicked problem” of marine plastic debris, and investigates the potential of the private sector, through the philosophy of CSR, to assist in reducing the amount and impacts of marine plastic debris. To illustrate how CSR could minimise marine plastic pollution, an industry-targeted code of conduct was developed. Applying CSR would be most effective if implemented in conjunction with facilitating governance frameworks, such as supportive governmental regulation and non-governmental partnerships. This study maintains that management policies must be inclusive of all stakeholders if they are to match the scale and severity of the marine plastic debris issue.

Plastics are the most common form of debris found along the Argentine coastline. The Río de la Plata estuarine area is a relevant case study to describe a situation where ample policy exists against a backdrop of plastics disposed by populated coastal areas, industries, and vessels; with resultant high impacts of plastic pollution on marine turtles and mammals. Policy and institutions are in place but the impact remains due to ineffective waste management, limited public education and awareness, and weaknesses in enforcement of regulations. This context is frequently repeated all over the world. We list possible interventions to increase the effectiveness of policy that require integrating efforts among governments, the private sector, non-governmental organizations and the inhabitants of coastal cities to reduce the amount of plastics reaching the Río de la Plata and protect threatened marine species. What has been identified for Argentina applies to the region and globally.

This study determines the impacts of gross domestic product, domestic bank credits given to private sector, and military expenditures on carbon emissions based on 1990–2019 time period. The panel quantile regression approach is applied for the Visegrád group countries. Our empirical results reveal that domestic bank credit given to private sector has a positive and meaningful impact on carbon emissions at medium and high quantile levels. On the other hand, it has been determined that gross domestic product has a reducing impact on carbon emissions, but military expenditures have an increasing impact on carbon emissions. Besides, as consequences of such tests, the difference between the quantiles, that is, the heterogeneous structure was revealed. A separate model was created with a different panel quantile approach for robustness control, and the results were compared by giving different values to penalty term. These results provide strong evidence for decision-makers and implementers.

Energy intensity reduction is an exigent issue for Iran, where energy consumption is so high. Therefore, finding effective policies to reduce energy intensity is essential. With this in mind, the impact of financial development, government investment, oil revenues, and trade openness on energy intensity is assessed in this study. We combined structural vector error correction model (SVECM) and directed acyclic graphs (DAG) technique to examine the relationships between study variables. The results of DAG prove that financial development, government investment, oil revenues, and trade openness influence the intensity of energy. Besides, the significant and long-run relationships among variables allowed us to apply SVECM. Impulse response functions and variance decomposition analysis indicate that government investment, oil revenues, and trade openness are negatively associated with the intensity of energy. Also, financial development positively influences energy intensity. Meanwhile, the impact of government investment is more significant than oil revenues, trade openness, and financial development impacts. So, government investment is the most effective policy regarding optimizing the consumption of energy and reducing energy intensity. We also advise policymakers to use oil revenues to increase government investment, enhance trade openness, and tax the private sector to improve the level of energy intensity.

This study is the first attempt to examine the effects of changing climate and financial development on rice cultivation in the context of agrarian economy like Thailand from 1969 to 2016. The current study also uses other important variables, such as cultivated area, organic fertilizers usage, and rural labor to determine the long-term connection amid variables. In this study, we applied several econometric techniques, for instance the autoregressive distributive lag–error correction model (ARDL–ECM), vector error correction model (VECM), impulse response functions (IMFs), and variance decomposition (VARD) method to estimate the most reliable and robust outcomes. The empirical results showed that in the long- and short-run, there is a reduction in rice cultivation as temperature increase. The carbon dioxide (CO₂) positively affects rice cultivation in the long-run, while this association is negative in the short-run. The findings further revealed that in the long- and short-run, domestic credit provided by the financial sector significantly positive improved rice cultivation, while domestic credit to private sector by banks negatively affects rice cultivation. The important input factors, including cultivated area, organic fertilizers usage, and rural labor significantly positive contributed toward rice cultivation in the long- and short-run. The calculated long-run causal connection of all the studied variables with rice cultivation is validated. The estimated short-run causal relationship is unidirectional among temperature, CO₂ emissions, financial development, rural labor, and rice cultivation. In addition, our outcomes are robust and also verified by IMFs and VARD method. The study offers some important policy suggestions to increase rice production with the help of sound and well-developed financial systems and climate controls.

Over the last decades, the demographic changes have all altered the population structure and influenced the social, economic, and political characteristics of countries over the world. Therefore, the creation of novel ecosystems, new clusters and systems which involved technology and industry, business, education, science, and innovation are increased rapidly. However, in order to solve the future global challenges, the created various types of clusters, public and private sector systems should cooperate and work together as a unit. Therefore, one of the proposed solutions is unified regional ecosystems’ building. The Interreg European Life Science Ecosystems (ELISE) project addresses the societal challenge which is common to the European regions: to promote better health for all. This covers the need to improve health and well-being outcomes, to promote market growth, job creation, and EU competitiveness. Based on the project, three different regions of the European countries—Poland, Italy, and Germany—are selected in order to perform the analysis of drivers directly influencing the move from the existing clusters to unified regional ecosystem. The performed analysis showed that the government of a country and regional public authorities have the direct influence and play the central role in shaping unified regional ecosystems. The common economic, social, and political situation in a country is dependent on the government and it is influenced by the regional public authorities. Therefore, the collaboration and conversation among such institutions is the important factor defining how quickly different countries will create unified ecosystems and will solve the future problems.

Given the alarming deterioration of the environment, the present analysis investigates the role of eco-innovation, natural resources and financial development in influencing the environmental degradation of China. Applying the novel method of quantile ARDL, the current research is beneficial in portraying the dependence patterns of the variables with special emphasis on the nexus of eco-innovation and ecological footprint across numerous quantiles of the distribution which has not been examined so far in the literature. The empirical findings reveal that in the long run, eco-innovation reduces the level of ecological deterioration in China across all quantiles. On the other hand, the results suggest that the increase in credit to the private sector and natural resource rents augments environmental degradation. The outcomes imply that the over-dependence on natural resources and financial development can worsen the goals of sustainable development in China if the strategies of conservation and management are ignored. Moreover, witnessing the favorable role of eco-innovation, competent policies and regulations can be made toward sustainable efficient technologies and eco-friendly energy sources to halt global warming.

This study is hinged on analyzing factors such as agriculture and globalization (de jure trade and financial) that threaten a sustainable environment using two proxies of ecological footprint: carbon and noncarbon ecological footprint in the Philippines while controlling for the influence of fossil to GDP, economic growth, urban population, and financial development using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) framework. The result provides evidence of long‐run stable state among the variables. The result validates inverted U‐shaped pattern of EKC involving relationship between agricultural development and ecological footprint for the Philippines indicating that initially, ecological footprint increases as the agriculture develops and then declines as the agriculture matures to generate efficiency and low carbon. In addition, this study explores elasticities of the variables using ARDL, FMOLS, DOLS, and CCR procedure and found that de jure financial globalization exerts positive influence on ecological footprint in the long run. De jure trade globalization is found to be negative and significant in the long run. It is also found that agricultural level operates below the threshold level required to maximize the growth benefits of agricultural system towards mitigating environmental sustainability. Further empirical result shows a positive relationship between economic growth, fossil fuel, urban-population growth, and ecological footprint, and negative insignificant relationship between credit to private sector and ecological footprint. The government should optimize the use of agricultural land through well-articulated economic integration strategy fashioned to pave way for cleaner and low-carbon technologies sources like solar, geothermal, biomass, biogas, tidal power, photovoltaic, and wind energy in the agricultural production to avoid further deterioration of the environment.

By applying the ARDL (autoregressive distributed lag) bounds testing method, this study examines the short- and long-term dynamic relationship between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, economic growth (gross domestic product), industrialization, trade, and urban population in Tanzania from 1990 to 2020. The study found that economic growth, trade, industrialization, and the urban population all contributed to the increase in environmental degradation (i.e., carbon dioxide emissions). However, we found that financial credit (i.e., domestic credit to the private sector) reduces carbon dioxide emissions, and its effects are significant in EKC (environmental Kuznets curve) model. Our findings revealed that economic growth (i.e., income) was responsible for both short- and long-term increases in carbon dioxide emissions in Tanzania. Economic growth is harmful to the environmental quality above a threshold value of 6.23%. Furthermore, the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is confirmed for Tanzania. Our findings suggest that policymakers should monitor and use the threshold levels to manage carbon dioxide emissions and to protect the environmental quality. Further, a strong focus should be placed on formulating environmental policies (i.e., carbon tax policy) as industrialization, urban population, economic growth, and trade continue to grow in future, restricting carbon dioxide emissions and safeguarding the environment.