As a response to the ‘Grand Challenges’ of the 21st century such as climate change and social inequalities, the achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), released by the United Nations in 2015, became a matter of urgency. The SDGs are a continuation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aiming to cover an even broader scope of social, environmental and economic challenges. To ensure that the 2030 Agenda, represented by 17 goals and 169 underlying targets, becomes a positive force for all available resources have to act in concert. Governments, NGOs, civil society and the private sector bear the responsibility to guide the way of transformation towards a more sustainable future. However, the most significant shift regarding the development of the SDGs has been the central role of the private sector that is considered to be a key player towards the accomplishment of the 2030 Agenda. In order examine the role and contribution of the private sector, the thesis aims to contribute to previous research within a five-step investigation: (1) analysis of which business opportunities or challenges emerge out of active involvement with the SDGs, (2) how partnerships or collaborations can contribute to a more effective implementation process, (3) whether goal prioritization is of relevance to advance the progress of SDG implementation, (4) how the SDG progress can be measured, reported and communicated and lastly (5) how effectively (Swedish) companies have currently managed to implement the Global Goals into their business operations. Based on the review of the literature and the identified research gaps, the following research question has been formulated to gain in-depth knowledge and investigate the phenomenon of the overall research purpose:   RQ: How do companies in the private sector implement the SDGs into their business operations and what are the determinants that drive the progress of the implementation? This study has been conducted through a qualitative research approach consisting of interviews with private sector representatives, governmental and non-governmental organizations. The framework for this study is based on three elements of theory: (1) Stakeholder Theory by Edward Freeman (1984), outlining how sustainable development can be approached with a stakeholder mindset, (2) the Triple-Bottom-Line approach by Elkington (1997) characterized by efforts to localize universal concepts of sustainability and (3) Sustainable Business Model Innovation represented by the Flourishing Business Model Canvas (Upward 2013, 2016) and the Triple Layered Business Model Canvas (Joyce and Paquin, 2016) supporting individuals and organizations seeking competitive sustainability-oriented change. The main conclusion of this research includes the requirement of a shift of how the Global Goals are approached by the private sector. SDG implementation or sustainable actions in general are not to be seen as an add on but need to be actively integrated into core business operations. However, to initiate fruitful change the expected role of the private sector needs to be clearly communicated. Identified actions to drive the progress of SDG implementation range from increased partnership engagement, the prioritization of goals up to the measurement and reporting on sustainable efforts taken. Finally, Credible Sustainability Standards turned out to be the most promising solution to eradicate many of the by our participants identified shortcomings of the Global Goals.

Potential synergy effects and conflicts, so-called interactions, between a climate action that aims to mitigate the climate impact and five targets of the Sustainable Development Goals are identified in this study. The climate action is Conscious material choices for the frame, and the materials assessed are climate improved concrete and domestic wood. Standard concrete is used as the business as usual scenario. A pre-school building is used as an example building to demonstrate the difference in the climate impact of a frame made from the two materials assessed in the study. Life cycle assessments (LCA) of the frames shows that the domestic wood frame has a lower climate impact than the climate improved concrete frame.Two methods are used in this study. The first method is making an LCA for transportation of the materials assessed to see the environmental impact, and there is one scenario for each material where the transportation method is by a truck and one that is by train. The second method used for the study is a goal interaction scoring-method from “A draft framework for understanding SDG interactions” by Nilsson et al. (2016) that gives the interactions a score based on specific criteria. The scores are visualised in a colour coordinated matrix. The interactions generate synergies if the sums of the scores in the matrix are positive and will likely help accomplish the target. If the sums of the scores in the matrix are negative, it indicates that there are conflicts that could endanger the possibilities to reach the target.LCA of the transport scenarios shows that when the transportation distance is long, the climate impact is lowest when transporting as much as possible of the materials by train. Transporting the domestic wood for the frame by train (for longer distances) has a lower climate impact than transporting the climate improved concrete. For shorter distances, there is not a significant difference between transportation by truck or by train. The climate improved concrete gets score 0, meaning that there are neither positive nor negative interactions for the chosen material for the frame. The domestic wood gets the score +8, which indicates that there are synergies. Both the climate improved concrete and the domestic wood should not interfere with the accomplishment of the Sustainable Development Goal’s targets. However, the domestic wood for the frame generates more synergies and by choosing the domestic wooden frame for a building using a train as a transportation of the material when possible has the lowest environmental impact of the assessed materials for the frame. / <p>2020-06-08</p>

This research aims to explore the links between cross-sector collaboration, a holistic multi-stakeholder approach, and Sustainable Development, and identify whether such a holistic approach can lead to better collaboration processes, and ultimately results. Specifically, it focuses on sustainability in relation to food, through the lense of a qualitative case-study on the city of Malmö, which aims to identify and implement a more sustainable food system through the development of a Food Partnership where diverse stakeholders from across society are invited to actively engage in the process on a relatively equal basis. The study explores these theoretical concepts through the research question: How can a cross-sector collaboration with a holistic multi-stakeholder approach be developed and sustained in the pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals?The research uncovers the key factors which should be considered in order to form a holistic and long-term partnership, and based on these factors, an analytical framework is developed and used to assess the empirical findings and develop recommendations for the Malmö Food Partnership.This thesis provides a theoretical contribution by bridging the research gap between the concepts of cross-sector collaboration, a holistic multi-stakeholder approach and Sustainable Development. Furthermore, it also provides a practical contribution with its analytical framework model, which can be adapted to future partnerships for the Sustainable Development Goals in urban settings.

In this dissertation I address urban sustainability with a focus on loss of cultural heritage and ecological knowledge by expanding the concept “extinction of experience” (EoE). Conceptualized by conservationist Robert Michael Pyle, EoE is the loss of nature experiences leading to apathy towards biodiversity and degradation of the common habitat. I expand upon Pyle’s formulation of the concept by considering the EoE cycle as an indirect driver that amplifies biodiversity losses. Additionally, I introduce the analysis of interrelated losses of biological and cultural diversity in relation to EoE. With a biocultural approach I discuss that EoE is tied to the infrastructural inertia within the global urban economy. I propose that addressing the EoE cycle is critical in that as a complex and multi-faceted process, it cements threats to biological and cultural diversity as permanent fixtures within society by obscuring their significance in light of economic development. This cycle remains a hidden problematic in that it perpetuates the environmental crisis while making such losses invisible within day-to-day lifestyle habits, constructing an emerging urban culture within the global economy that is ignorant of ecological processes and sustainability requirements. I frame the implications of EoE with an analysis of the newly proposed revisions of the UN Sustainable Development Goals voted on in September 2015 to prioritize local ecological knowledge and biocultural heritage.

The United Nations member states adopted and signed the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, establishing a framework for global discussion on sustainable development. The inclusion of 'Economic Growth' in these goals begs the question of what constitutes sustainable economic growth in the eyes of the UN. This insight, in conjunction with the ongoing debate about the growth paradigm, growthism, and the limits to growth, is, to put it mildly, fascinating and worth examining. Numerous studies conducted on this issue reveal that conventional economic growth is unsustainable and that alternative strategies must be used to bring about a paradigm shift. The purpose of this research is to determine whether traits of a competing discourse known as 'Degrowth' may be detected in the United Nations' discourse of sustainable economic growth. Whilst sustainable development has been a prominent topic for decades, Degrowth can be perceived as a more recent, less mainstream, and even radical discourse. The discourse emphasizes the limits to growth and advocates for democratically-led shrinking in production and consumption with the goal of achieving equality, justice and ecological sustainability. In order to accomplish the research project’s objective, the discourse and key characteristics of Degrowth are explored.  The study was conducted as a qualitative case study (design) using document analysis as the method. The analysis was guided by the theoretical lens combining Dryzek’s discourse analysis approach and Cosme et al.’s framework. By examining solely documents produced by the UN itself, this analysis concluded that while there are some parallels between the UN’s discourse of sustainable economic growth and Degrowth, there is a distinct difference between the two. The SDGs represent the traditional understanding of sustainable development, a discourse in which it is believed that economic growth can and will be decoupled from ecological degradation and that growth, in fact, is the key to poverty eradication, whereas Degrowth represents a school of thought in which the capitalistic system is viewed as the culprit to a majority of issues at hand and that decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation has been declared as debunked.

Efforts to remove and recover nutrients from wastewater are motivated by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges of Engineering. Of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), multiple SDGs relate to managing nutrients in wastewater. SDG 6, which is to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all,” contains targets that aim to improve water quality by reducing pollution, halve the amount of untreated wastewater released to the environment, and increase recycling and safe reuse of wastewater (UN, 2017). SDG 2 seeks to improve food security and SDG 12 seeks to sustainably manage natural resources. Similarly, the National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges of Engineering highlight managing the nitrogen cycle and providing access to clean water (NAE, 2019). Centralized wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) have historically been designed to remove nutrients (such as nitrogen and phosphorus) and other contaminants prior to discharge. Modern wastewater treatment practices integrate recovery of resources including nutrients, energy, and water. The many available technologies, coupled with competing priorities, can complicate community decision-making on the choice of technology and the scale at which to implement the technology (i.e. building, community, or city), as well as determining how new upstream treatment may affect existing downstream treatment. Technologies that recover energy or manage nutrients such as anaerobic digestion, struvite precipitation, and microbial fuel cells can be implemented at a variety of scales in urban settings and may also be viable for influent types such as agricultural waste. Therefore, the overall goal of this dissertation is to contribute to the achievement of multiple sustainable development goals through the removal and recovery of nitrogen and phosphorus from a variety of influents at a variety of scales. One type of decision-making tool that assists in the choice of nutrient management technologies is a House of Quality. I developed a tool based on the House of Quality that integrated multiple priorities at three scales in a sewershed and produced rankings that generally align with current wastewater treatment practice. Accordingly, top-ranked city-scale technologies are those commonly employed (e.g. A2O, oxidation ditch) that use the dissolved organic carbon present in the wastewater to drive denitrification. Similarly, conventional treatment (e.g. flush toilet connected to a sewer) is ranked highest at the building scale because of its easy maintenance, small footprint, and inoffensive aesthetics. However, future trends such as technology development will likely affect the technologies, weightings, and scores and therefore improve the ranking of novel and emerging technologies. This trend may be amplified by the implementation of test beds, which can provide opportunities to improve the technical characteristics of developing technologies while minimizing risk for municipalities. The House of Quality planning tool was utilized in an in silico case study to analyze nutrient management technologies at three scales across the Northwest Regional Water Reclamation Facility sewershed in Hillsborough County, FL. The study demonstrated that employing treatment technologies upstream from the centralized wastewater treatment (i.e. building-scale source separation and community-scale technologies) could reduce nitrogen loading to the mainstream treatment train by over 50%. Sidestream treatment (i.e. the liquid effluent of anaerobic digestion that typically recycles back to the beginning of the mainstream treatment process) has minimal impact in nitrogen reduction, but is effective in reducing phosphorus loading to the mainstream due to high quantities of phosphorus recycling back to the head of the plant. These results can inform decision-makers about which context-specific nutrient management technologies to consider at a variety of scales, and illustrate that sidestream technologies can be the most effective in reducing phosphorus loading while building- and community-scale technologies can be most effective in reducing nitrogen loading to the centralized treatment plant. Struvite precipitation and microbial fuel cells (MFCs) can be used in combination to manage nutrients and recover energy in sidestreams of centralized WWTPs. Because the liquid effluent from engineered struvite precipitation often contains high concentrations of total nitrogen, I constructed and demonstrated a fixed-film nitrification reactor and a two-chambered MFC to further reduce total nitrogen and recover energy. The primary benefit of the MFC in the technology demonstrated here is not its ability to produce energy, but rather its ability to remove additional nitrogen through nitritation and denitritation. The sidestream nutrient removal prevents nutrients from returning to mainstream treatment, reducing operational costs. Such improvements to wastewater treatment processes can facilitate the transition to the resource recovery facility of the future by becoming a net-energy producer while also achieving the simultaneous benefits of nutrient recovery/removal and reduced costs associated with mainstream treatment. Nutrients and energy can also be recovered in agricultural settings. In this dissertation I studied an agricultural waste treatment system comprising a small-scale tubular anaerobic digester integrated with a low-cost, locally produced struvite precipitation reactor. This study investigated two digesters that treated swine waste in rural Costa Rica. I also facilitated construction of a pilot-scale struvite precipitation reactor that was built on site using local labor and local materials for approximately $920. Local products such as bittern (magnesium source) and soda ash (base) allowed for the production of struvite, a fertilizer that can replace synthetic fertilizer for rural farmers. Liquid-phase concentrations of PO43–-P and NH4+-N in agricultural wastewater increased by averages of 131% and 116%, respectively, due to release from the swine waste during anaerobic digestion. Despite this increase in liquid-phase concentrations, an average of 25% of total phosphorus and 4% of total nitrogen was removed from the influent swine manure through sedimentation in the digesters. During struvite precipitation, an average of 79% of PO43–-P and 12% of NH4+-N was removed from the waste stream and produced a solid with percentages (mass basis) of Mg, N, P of 9.9%, 2.4%, and 12.8%, respectively, indicating that struvite (MgNH4PO4) was likely formed. The treatment system offers multiple benefits to the local community: improved sanitation, removal of nutrients to prevent eutrophication, recovery of struvite as a fertilizer, and production of a final effluent stream that is suitable quality to be used in aquaculture. These are examples of how, more generally, quantifying nutrient recovery from agricultural waste and understanding recovery mechanisms can facilitate progress toward multiple sustainable development goals by improving sanitation, promoting sustainable management of wastes and natural resources, improving food security, and supporting local ecosystems. Managing nutrients from a variety of influent types at different scales can contribute to the achievement of multiple sustainable development goals. Worldwide trends of population growth and resource depletion highlight the need for models to easily allow decision-makers the ability to understand the fate of nutrients and implement infrastructure accordingly.

Cities are growing at unprecedented rates and are expected to be home to 70% of the world’s population in 2050. In this process, they face challenges such as densification, rapid population growth and loss of land and ecosystem services. Cities also have to remain livable and accessible to all. In 2014, the Swedish Public Health Agency declared that it would aim to close all avoidable health inequalities within one generation. In order to reach these objectives while also complying with the Sustainable Development Goals, urban green infrastructure (UGI) has been increasingly viewed as a powerful instrument that cities can utilize to help them meet their sustainability and human health targets. As nature-based solutions, UGI can greatly contribute to building resilience in urban areas by providing a number of ecosystem services. Simultaneously, UGI have also been shown to possess equigenic functions – the capacity to support the health of the least advantaged population groups equally or more so than the most privileged. This study has therefore aimed to operationalize a methodology to help identify optimal locations for developing and managing UGI in Stockholm with the aim of prioritizing health and minimizing impacts on existing ecosystems. This was done by drawing on 3 spatial datasets (land-cover, health and healthcare consumption, socioeconomics) and combining them using a GIS. The resulting maps are made for individual as well as aggregated health indicators. They display multiple optimal location clusters that were often located in the outer parts of the city, notably in the north-western and south-eastern boroughs. The inner-city however, showed little need for equigenic UGI improvements. The results and the implications of this methodology are discussed in relation to several aspects of UGI, including quality, quantity and accessibility, gentrification and UGI’s role in the smart city. Suggestions for future research building on this methodology are also provided.

The aim of this study was to examine key attributes of sustainable service innovation (SSI) in the hotel industry. The research has used backcasting from sustainable principles and a few frameworks for strategic sustainable development (FSSD) concepts. The FSSD concepts such as 5LM and strategic ABCD lens helped to discover an integrated framework for evaluating SSI. Document analysis and interviews with 6 practitioners from a single case study organization informed on how they recognize and contribute towards sustainability. The study shows the competitive benefits of using SSI strategically in the hotel industry. The recommendation is for them to complement FSSD with SDGs, the Sustainability Principles (SPs) so they can have a better definition of sustainability to implement into their operational processes.        This thesis contributed to the ongoing study on sustainability and its relationship to service innovation in addition to provide recommendations for companies striving towards sustainability path. The findings showed that SSI consists of four attributes: hotel industry, sustainable practice, organizational innovation, and resourcing. The result from the 5LM analysis and thematic analysis shows that sustainable practice has direct and indirect impacts on hotel industry, organizational innovation, and resourcing. Additionally, while using the ABCD approach resourcing appeared as the most important attribute. Since this research is based on a single case study, the future studies should conduct multiple case study to investigate the relationship between sustainability and service innovation.

Die Zunahme der Siedlungs- und Verkehrsfläche in Deutschland ist vom 30-Hektar-Ziel der Nationalen Nachhaltigkeitsstrategie immer noch entfernt. Die Daten des Jahres 2016 sind mit Unsicherheiten behaftet, weil eine Umstellung der Datengrundlage vom Automatisierten Liegenschaftsbuch (ALB) zum Amtlichen Liegenschaftskatasterinformationssystem (ALKIS) erfolgte. Deren wichtigste Auswirkungen werden am Beispiel eines Bundeslandes näher erläutert. Im bundesweiten Mittelwert sind jedoch die einmaligen Auswirkungen dieser Umstellung auf den Indikator der Nachhaltigkeitsstrategie „verkraftbar“. Auf der Ebene der Vereinten Nationen wurden im Jahr 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) verabschiedet. Das Target 15.3 schreibt sich das Streben nach einer „Land Degradation Neutral World“ auf die Fahne. Alle Länder sind gefordert, dieses Ziel durch messbare Indikatoren zu untersetzen. Das Forschungsinstitut Ecologic hat im Rahmen eines Forschungsvorhabens im Auftrag des Umweltbundesamtes, anknüpfend an die Deutsche Flächennutzungsstatistik, einen Vorschlag für einen Indikator unterbreitet.

The role of taxation in gender inequality is something that is perhaps not considered earnestly enough. Both in South Africa and within the context of global initiatives such as the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which are aimed at eradicating all forms of gender-based discrimination, the importance of understanding the gender consequences of tax policy, whether intended or not, should not be underestimated. This study seeks to identify whether or not there are any instances where South Africa’s personal income tax laws have an effect which is potentially inconsistent with both the Constitutional right to equality between genders and international gender equality agreements to which South Africa is bound, namely the CEDAW and the SDG. In doing so, determine whether South Africa’s personal income tax legislation should become a focal point in this regard and be one of the pillars that could further be used as a means to uphold and further the cause of substantive gender equity. / Mini Dissertation (MCom (Taxation))--University of Pretoria, 2020. / pt2021 / Taxation / MCom (Taxation) / Unrestricted