European Journal of Sustainable Development

Determining Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) Changes Using Remote Sensing Method in Lüleburgaz and LULC Change's Impacts on SDGs

Merve Guroglu Agdas — 2023-02-01

Urbanization is among the human activities that affect the quality of urban life and sustainable urban development at a global scale. For monitoring human-induced changes in cities, studies on the changes in land use/land cover (LULC) based on a series of satellite images along with geographic information systems (GIS) are widely used. This study aims to evaluate the LULC changes in Lüleburgaz between 2001 and 2021. For this purpose, the impacts of urban growth on natural areas and how these areas are handled in the context of sustainable development goals are examined, and the effects of urbanization on land use change are evaluated. The accuracy of the LULC maps was evaluated by means of the general accuracy index and the Kappa index. The overall accuracy rates of the land use maps for 2001, 2010, and 2021 were 96.32%, 93.66%, and 95.91%, respectively, while Kappa values were 0.95, 0.91, 0.94. These results indicate that, due to the effect of rapid urbanization and population growth over the last two decades, the built environment increased by 4.82% and the agricultural land has decreased by 4.88%. This result is a testament to the upward trend in the built environment at the expense of depleting a significant amount of agricultural land. The findings of the study provide useful data that can aid authorities in making conscious decisions to achieve sustainable urban planning and to improve environmental conditions.

Keywords: Urbanization, Land use/land cover change, Agricultural land, Sustainable development goals (SDGs), Remote sensing

Socioeconomic Determinants of Life Expectancy: Southeastern European Countries

Emiljan Karma — 2023-02-01

This paper analyses the socioeconomic determinants of life expectancy in Southeastern Europe countries highlighting the most important factors that can affect life expectancy in this part of Europe.

Two Panel Data Regression with fixed–effects model was applied for 20 years from 2000 to 2019. Eight socioeconomic and environmental explanatory variables were used to verify their influence on life expectancy.

The analysis highlights the important influence of factors such as urbanization; GDP per capita; fertility rate; education; marital status; CO2 emission and the non-significant influence of other factors, such as health expenditure or health care out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure. This study points out that healthcare spending (public and/or household out-of-pocket spending) is not a significant factor in improving life expectancy in SEE countries. Results illustrate that GDP per capita; urbanization, CO2 emissions, and fertility rate are the most influential and significant explanatory factors. A surprising result concerns marital status, which in this study affects life expectancy inversely in one of the panel regressions.

Life expectancy is a very important and expressive outcome indicator for public health. Each country is committed to spending public money to improve people's quality of life, which translates into a longer life (Life expectancy), or even better, a longer and healthier life (Health Adjusted Life Expectancy). The results of this study, considering the demographic development of the SEE countries (low fertility rate and aged people), show that policymakers need to consider public healthcare organization and reassess the effectiveness of public health expenditure. On the other hand, the balanced urbanization process with a clean ecosystem (less CO2 emissions) conducts a better life quality (consequently an improved life expectancy).

Keywords: Panel data analysis; Life Expectancy; Public Health; SEE Countries

Jel Classification: C33; H51; I15

Sustainable Insurance and Professional Liability: An Empirical Analysis

Asie Tsintsadze — 2023-02-01

Professional liability insurance combines types of property insurance for several categories of individuals who may cause material harm to third parties as a result of their professional activities. As market rivalry has strengthened with the development of a market economy, the demand for insurance protection has increased, and the presence of a professional liability insurance policy boosts the prestige and confidence of a professional in the eyes of his clients and business partners.

In many nations throughout the world, professional liability insurance is a burgeoning insurance industry that brings profit to insurance firms and helps professionals maintain their activity and business stability.

Given that professional liability insurance is becoming a strategically significant area of insurance, it is pertinent to examine the problems and prospects of its development, which largely determined the research task: empirical analysis determined the level of influence of factors affecting the development of professional liability; based on the analysis of the state of professional responsibility in the insurance market, the problems of the development of the sub-sectors were identified.

Keywords: professional risk, insurance, object of insurance, professionalism, factor analysis

Prospection of the Factors Impacting the Sustainability of the Moroccan Pension Scheme

Said Outlioua — 2023-02-01

The objective of this study is to identify the factors impacting the sustainability of the Moroccan pension system. To this end, an adapted literature review and a study of the history and current diagnosis of the Moroccan pension system were conducted. Thus, variables appropriate to the factors identified in the literature review were selected to analyze their effects on the sustainability of the Moroccan pension system. This analysis revealed the impact of economic and demographic factors on the sustainability of the Moroccan pension system, and that over the last decade, the financial factor has also had a significant impact. Furthermore, between the 1990s and the 2000s, factors related to pension legislation and to management of the pension scheme had a significant impact on the sustainability of Moroccan pension plans. The article also discusses the efforts made by the Moroccan government to make the national pension system sustainable, some of which are in perfect harmony with the results obtained.

Keywords: Sustainability, Pension scheme, Morocco, pension reform.

JEF classification: H55, H75.

Fostering Skills for Sustainability – Lessons Learnt from Curriculum Design and Learning Outcomes

Bogdan Fleacă — 2023-02-01

Sustainability thinking plays a key role in business development and transformative approach for a safe, sustainable and prosperous future. Education is expected to take action to provide meaningful learning opportunities in different settings and contexts to foster critical thinking thereby understanding the importance of sustainable lifestyles, a climate-neutral economy and a fair society.

Given the increased responsibility of higher education providers for preparing students as future responsible change agents, the study analyzed the curriculum design to foster sustainability skills of students in the particular case of the educational project for cooperation in higher education, implemented from 2020 to 2022. A quantitative survey was conducted aiming at assessing the learners' satisfaction and the fulfillment of learning outcomes, drawing up findings and improvement gaps to facilitate further exploitation of results.

The findings suggested the improvements from one session to another and the positive changes induced through the aid of course objectives, specific learning outcomes, and the correlation between sustainability themes, SDGs topics, and subjects taught. These stimulated the acquisition of knowledge, skills and attitudes toward sustainability as well as hands-on opportunities to change the status quo, to improve teaching and learning, enabling a better alignment of curricula outcomes in the area of business engineering education.

Finally, the authors highlighted the curriculum content and methodological approach may be used and adjusted in different educational settings boosting synergies with other initiatives of a similar nature in other institutional and national contexts.

Keywords: sustainable development, curriculum design, learning outcomes, sustainability skills, quality education

Overeducation in Arab Labour Markets; Different Measures, Different Outcomes

Halah Alattas — 2023-02-01

Since the introduction of the topic of overeducation, there has been a methodological debate on the most effective measurement tool. This debate has concluded that there is no single most appropriate method to measure overeducation, which depends entirely on data availability. By using the Integrated Labour Market Panel Survey (ILMPS) for Egypt (1998-2018), Jordan (2010-2016) and Tunisia (2014), this paper contributes to the existing literature on overeducation by measuring it across a sample of Arab countries using different methods as specified in the literature. The results reveal that the incidence of overeducation significantly varies across the measures. The subjective WA approach yielded the highest incidence of overeducation among the measures, whereas JA approach produced the lowest incidence. The RM approach, however, fell in a middle between the two other approaches and captured the region's political conflict and social unrest. Moreover, the Spearman rank correlation between the measurements was relatively low, indicating short overlaps among workers categorized as overeducated across measures.

Keywords: Overeducation, Arab countries, Workers’ self-Assessment, Job analyst, Realized Matches.

Design Characteristics for Sustainable Pediatric Healthcare Environments: Stakeholder’s Perception

Abdul Halim Babbu — 2023-02-01

Background: The therapeutic environments of children and adolescents differ from those of adults, and are complex entities. Though studies have been conducted on the built environments of adult healthcare facilities, the impact of therapeutic environments on the health outcomes of pediatric patients is yet to be explored. Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate design characteristics for creating a pleasant, comfortable, and child-friendly physical environment in children's healthcare settings. Method: After extracting features that influence pediatric healthcare design from the relevant literature, a survey questionnaire, consisting of 45 items from 14 domains, was conducted. Principal component analysis (PCA) using varimax rotation was used to explore the intrinsic concept in an Indian sample (N= 224). Results: PCA with varimax rotation yielded 4- factors: (1) child-centred design characteristics; (2) indoor ambient environmental quality; (3) positive distraction strategies; and (4) sense of autonomy and control, accounting for 78.14% of the explained variance. A factor loading range of 0.41 to 0.93 was found across the four variables, indicating construct validity, and all the factors were found to be significantly related to each other. Conclusions: This study concludes that the built environment of pediatric healthcare settings impacts patients’ health outcomes and behaviour, with decreased patient stress & anxiety, and better family experience. The findings suggest the need of providing comfort to the children through several rejuvenating elements such as positive distraction strategies, play opportunities, family and peer interaction, child-friendly design, age-associated characteristics, etc. It also suggests various design characteristics that help contribute the positive patient health outcomes.

Keywords: pediatric therapeutic environment, healthcare design, child-friendly design, therapeutic play, family-centred care

Measuring Sustainable Ecocentric Views of Young Entrepreneurs with NEP Scale - A Way Forward to Oman 2040 vision

Samyuktha P. Suresh — 2023-02-01

Oman’s vision 2040 focuses on four main pillars of People, Economy, Institutions and Environment. Every nation’s economy greatly benefits from its environment, both directly and indirectly. Direct usage is through its use in manufacturing and indirect usage is through the myriad of services it offers. In recent decades, the nature of the environmental concerns facing the world has undergone a major shift. The best defense to sustain the environment is to instill awareness among the youth. This research attempted to initiate this defense mechanism through an assessment of environmental paradigms among budding Omani entrepreneurs. Researchers adopted an area sampling design to select respondents from designated food service-sectors. Data collection was administered through a structured questionnaire using NEP scale focused on five facets such as Reality of Limits to Growth, Anti-anthropocentrism, Fragility of Nature’s Balance, Rejection of Exemptionalism and Possibility of an Eco-Crisis. The analysis included Descriptive statistics, student’s t test, ANOVA and multiple comparison using Tukey HSD test that revealed the impact of respondents’ gender, type of business and location on environmental paradigms to comprehend creative entrepreneurs' willingness to sustain natural resources in support of Oman's Vision 2040.

Keywords: Ecocentric views; Young Entrepreneurs; NEP scale; Sustainable Development (SD); Oman Vision 2040

Tendencies and Perspectives of Organic Farming Development in the EU – the Significance of European Green Deal Strategy

Wioletta Wrzaszcz — 2023-02-01

Organic system of agricultural production is particularly important in the context of agriculture sustainability. Taking into consideration sustainability premises, agricultural sector should deliver environmental, social and economic profits. One of the most important form of agriculture in this context is organic production. In 2019, the European strategy of Green Deal underlined the need of further and faster development of organic farms in the EU. The purpose of the paper is establishing current tendencies, as well as perspectives of organic farming development, including its market environment in the EU. The accent was focused on Poland`s situation and experiences. The period of the analysis covered the years 2012-2020. The data used in the research came from national institution Agricultural and Food Quality Inspection, Statistics Poland reports and papers, as well as database of Eurostat. Indicator analysis methods were used and trends were established.

The results of the study revealed, that during the analyzed period, organic farming developed in the EU. The main statistics, such as the number of organic farms and organic agricultural land improved significantly. The current trends in individual European countries in the field of development of the organic management system indicate, that this segment of the agricultural market has different significance in individual countries, which may also result from local economic and market conditions. Based on the research results, it was stated, that organic farming development in the EU – in the nearest further – will be challenging, especially in the context of the european strategic purposes, presented in Green Deal documents.

Keywords: organic farming, organic farms, agricultural land in organic system of production, organic processors, European Green Deal strategy, EU, Poland

Renewable Energy Sources Based on Agricultural Production: Potential Applications Within the Silk Road Economic Belt Framework

Zhi Ji — 2023-02-01

The article is devoted to the Ukrainian-Chinese cooperation in the context of the joint construction of the "Silk Road Economic Belt", in particular, the cost-effective production of renewable energy sources based on agricultural production on the territory of Ukraine with the involvement of investors from China is highlighted. It has been proved that it is advisable to create an agro-industrial park in the agricultural sector, whose activities can be aimed at research and development of new technologies for growing agricultural products and "green technologies" in the field of agriculture. Calculations indicate the possibility of substantiating the quantitative characteristics of biofuel production and the ecological state of the territories. It is shown that in order to identify the degree of influence of these economic and environmental factors on the efficiency of biofuel production enterprises, it is necessary to conduct a systematic assessment of them with the construction of a mechanism for the functioning of such an enterprise as part of an agricultural park, which reflects the relationship of factors of the efficiency of biofuel production.

Keywords: The economic belt of the Silk Road, Agricultural Park; Production of renewable energy sources, Production of biofuels, Efficiency of functioning of biofuel production enterprises.

Investigating the Impact of Structural Changes: The Socio-Economic Security Framework

Elina Pakhucha — 2023-02-01

This study shows that ensuring socio-economic security of the country, which is defined as a set of conditions necessary to ensure normal economic development. It is almost the most important determinant that determines the favorable conditions of economic activity of economic entities. In general, the socio-economic security of business entities ensures the ability to create and maintain such conditions of economic activity, under which the influence of external and internal factors does not lead to negative processes regarding sustainable development, necessary for achieving the set goals. It considers the system approach to the assessment of socio-economic security of business entities considers which includes the following assessment parameters: main purpose and objectives of the analysis of socio-economic security, selecting types of the analysis of socio-economic security, establishing basic rules and analysis stages, selecting and using basic models, methods and indicators to assess socio-economic security, construction of the aggregated indicator. The study researches of the methods of assessment of socio-economic security. It suggests that the index of socio-economic security is defined by comparing volumes of a company's gross investments and the amount of resources needed to maintain an optimal indicator of socio-economic security, since the source of socio-economic security is the profit received by the company resulting from the interaction with external environment subjects. According to the results of the conducted assessment of socio-economic security by comparing volumes of the company's gross investments and the amount of resources needed to maintain an optimal indicator of socio-economic security, the integral estimate of security in recent years was obtained. The article outlines the aspects of simulating the socio-economic security of business entities, conducted by means of correlation and regression analysis and by forecasting the future security level using quantitative indicators. Using the trends, the paper analyzes the principle and characteristics of other simulating and forecasting techniques and identifies their advantages and disadvantages. It allows considering as practicable the use of correlation and regression analysis and its results, while making management decisions to enhance the socio-economic security of business entities.

Keywords: economic security, national economy, national security, socio-economic security, structural changes, business entities, economic structure, modelling

Human Resource Development within the Sustainability Science Framework

Sherine Fathy El-Fekey — 2023-02-01

The United Nations 2030 17 Sustainable Development Goals are anticipated to make a significant contribution to humanity's well-being (SDGs). The agenda is founded on the triple bottom line (TBL) idea, according to which social inclusion and environmental sustainability are essential for continued economic development. In order to determine the crucial role that human resource development (HRD) plays in sustainability, this study will review relevant academic literature and update the TBL model to include and emphasize the HRD dimension and the dynamism and resilience of the sustainability framework; and to fill the literature gap in relating HRD to sustainability. This paper takes a deductive approach and is based on reviewing state-of-the-art literature to develop a new conceptual framework integrating HRD into the sustainability model. Hence, relevant studies are selected; based on criteria, mainly from refereed journals in the fields of human resources and sustainability. These studies will be critically analyzed to highlight their main focus, findings, and key contributions to the proposed framework. The paper proposed a conceptual framework that is global, resilient, and dynamic in nature to face today’s challenges. This framework aims to capitalize on the previous researchers’ designed sustainability models, try to complement some of these models’ perceived limitations, and shed light on HRD multi-level incorporations in sustainability.

The paper proposed a “Global Dynamic Sustainable Humanity Framework” that stresses on (1) Integrating HRD into the TBL sustainability model; (2) Embedding the resilience concept in the framework; (3) Transforming the sustainability framework into a dynamic one; (4) take the sustainability framework to a global level. The paper also suggested raising “sustainable humanity” awareness by introducing a paradigm shift - from a traditional environment to a sustainable environment – as a prerequisite to the success and effectiveness of the proposed framework. The paper integrated rich theoretical perspectives and sustainability models of different studies into one coherent framework. It also filled the gap in the literature studying the HRD's crucial role in sustainable development. The proposed framework enriches and enables HRD practitioners to play an integral role in sustainable development on the individual, organizational and societal levels – nationally and globally. Their role as change catalysts is crucial in applying the proposed Global Dynamic Sustainable Humanity Framework, raising people's awareness of sustainability, help making a paradigm shift towards sustainability.

Keywords: Human Resource Development; Sustainability; Triple Bottom Line; Global Sustainability Framework; Resilient; Dynamic

Green Economy as a Prerequisite for Sustainable Development: Analysis of International and Ukrainian Experience

Valerii Bondarenko — 2023-02-01

Abstract

The article reflects the approaches to the essential content of the concept of green economy in the context of the implementation of ecologically-oriented production, ensuring the welfare of society and achieving sustainable development goals, the expediency and socio-economic need to transition to a system of management based on the principles of green economy concept, identifies priority activities to ensure an effective and progressive transition to sustainable development and green economy. The key challenges facing the global economy at the present stage are presented, and the possible options for an effective response to such problems through the prism of sustainable development and implementation of the principles of green economy are considered. The experience of countries of the European and Asia-Pacific regions in developing national strategies for transition to a green economy, which are based on ensuring the life of society in harmony with nature, the promotion of natural biodiversity and the growth of human well-being through the promotion of conservation, is analyzed. The organizational and legal aspects of the formation of green economy in Ukraine are considered, the problematic issues of implementation of the ideas and principles of the concept of green economy on the way to ensure progressive development are given. According to the approved strategy of the state ecological policy of Ukraine the directions of development of green economy, providing introduction of the effective financial tools, in particular, green bonds, green crediting, creation of funds of financing of green projects, optimization of green tariffs are offered and proved.

Key words: green economy, sustainable development, globalization, global challenges, rational economic management, social justice.

Branding Madrid as a Sustainable City: The role of Mega Projects

Laura Juarez — 2023-02-01

The paper awards the role of mega project as core element of building a branding strategy for city image promotion. The studied area is the city of Madrid that is promoted as a ‘sustainable city’ using as a main axis the Madrid Nuevo Norte Project. The study proposes a conceptual combined branding corporative strategy through the analysis of two particular models. The first one is the branding model of 4Rs and the second the marketing model of 8Ps. The study supports that the proposed branding strategy creates the appropriate framework in order the city of Madrid to increase the value of its image by linking the MNN project and being considered by consumers, visitors, companies and other stakeholders as the new benchmark for a sustainable European city.

Keywords: Mega Project; Urban sustainable development; city branding; conceptual model; Madrid