Corporate sustainable development is placed between simplified interpretations and an overabundance of complexity and requirements that hampers implementation. Stakeholder Relations Management is one approach for the operationalization of sustainable development on the corporate level, which enables the inclusion of aspects of sustainability into corporate decision-making in a pragmatic way. However, stakeholder pressure and economic constraints lead companies to adopt only a small segment of the concept of sustainable development. Therefore, a referential framework is needed in order to regard corporate initiatives within the wider context of sustainable development on the theoretical level. The framework of sustainable development presented here, which was developed during a research project funded by the "Austrian Science Fund", takes the wide range of notions of sustainable development into account. Like a map, the framework depicts approaches to sustainable development and provides an overview of the aspects of sustainable development (scope) as well as the different levels of complexity that are associated therewith (depth). This framework is conceived as a tool to classify approaches to sustainable development in a wider context. (author's abstract) / Series: Research Paper Series of the Research Focus Managing Sustainability

Marmara Sea and Black Sea connected with renowned Bosporus surround Istanbul, the city, which owns the privilege of bridging Europe and Asia. Besides such inland seas; forests and wetlands fragmented around and in the city maintain the natural cycle in the region. However, Istanbul as a fast developing urban area witnesses environmental issues like many other urban areas in global scale. Rapid economic and population growth of the city increase the pressure on above mentioned natural resources. Sustainable development of built environment is one of the best solutions in order to mitigate environmental damages of urban areas. The solution comes with green construction projects and systems yet the city and the market itself have barriers to block or slow the process of sustainable development. Identification of such barriers and reviewing international sustainable development practices paves the way for generating recommendations for environmentally friendly urban expansion in Istanbul. Survey targeting market professionals was conducted to identify sustainable development barriers in Istanbul and in order to address such barriers the thesis refers to conducted interviews and international practices presented in the literature review. The thesis draws economic, market and governmental recommendations which are particularly focused on financial incentives, raising awareness and enacting green laws involving all stakeholders of construction and real estate market.

In the context of sustainable development, evaluations have particularly high relevance as complex issues have to be dealt with generally over an extended period of time. Furthermore, there is a growing demand to evaluate against the concept of sustainable development. Especially evaluations with sustainable development are a rather new type of evaluation, as the source of its evaluation questions and the criteria applied are rooted in the concept of sustainable development. Sustainability of a specific project or process is often highly case specific as sustainable development is determined by many often unique issues. However, evaluations would be highly inefficient, if they would have to be newly designed in every case. Thus it is necessary to determine and utilize the major issues for evaluations with sustainable development. This paper is part of a series of three papers - which can be used independently - that present the major common issues for evaluations with sustainable development in a Tool Box. The results presented here are based on outcomes of a research project funded by the "Austrian Science Fund". This paper presents practical problems related to the issue of complexity in evaluations with sustainable development. Notwithstanding the multiple challenges, the strategic options available are presented in terms of strategies. Especially commissioning agents, but also other evaluation stakeholders will find an overview and an assessment of the strategies regarding resources required, state of practical experience as well as their compatibility with the concept of sustainable development. (author's abstract) / Series: Research Paper Series of the Research Focus Managing Sustainability

M.A. (Geography and Environmental Management) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

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.

The aim of this thesis is to warn of possible problem of erosion of sustainable development concept. The study combines content and frequency analysis as well as hermeneutics and its framework builds on three essential UN documents. By the scope of these documents along with the use of secondary literature is then possible to search and analyze various conceptions of sustainable development in important documents of organizations or institutions of global level, european regional level and local level of Czech republic. With the research at the place we can say that sustainable development erodes in particular organizations, across these organizations, generally through time and space and that the erosion is caused in two ways, with the specific purpose or unconsciously. The most common was the erosion stemming from leaning on traditional neoliberal paradigm of economic growth. Except the erosion, the research can be used to examine how organizations understand the concept of sustainable development.

Published Article / The vision of CUT is to transform itself into a sustainable university, by incorporating sustainable development in its teaching, research and learning environment, and by maximizing and mainstreaming environmental, economic and social sustainability in all its operations and educational activities. For this reason it launched a sustainable development (SD) project in February 2011. This process is being managed by the Office of Technology and Innovation and executed according to a project plan, which is continually rolled-out as progress is being made with the project. This article is a brief summary of progress that has been made during the first year of implementation of the plan.

Published Article / Sustainable development is the key issue for enabling the survival of human culture. Product development is sometimes seen as conflicting with the aims of sustainable development. This comes from a twofold impact: the production of new goods exploits scarce resources, and their use creates additional resource consumption and potential disparity. However, innovation and product development are important means to fulfil the needs of present and future generations and to achieve sustainable development. In this context, we must also consider the development of service products - classical services and product - related ones creating surplus value from physical products. The contribution of product development to sustainability will depend on the way sustainability issues are integrated into the development process. An important focus is on the early phases of product development and especially on the process of requirements analysis since this integrates all sustainability role players as potential stakeholders.

This thesis argues for the significance of urban resilience in sustainable urban development as well as for the necessity for practitioners to engage with this new emerging concept. It does so with a theoretical contribution to the definition of urban resilience, and with case studies analysis that help develop practical pathways to its attainment. For this purpose, the author has used a particular existing method (the Urban Futures method) developed within the EPSRC-funded four-year Urban Futures research programme. The author, as a member of the inter-disciplinary research team and of the sub-team of the ‘Surface Built Environment and Open Spaces’ work package, was instrumental to the development of that method, particularly for those aspects that pertain specifically to urban design and planning. In the section 5.3.3 the personal contribution of the author is described in detail. Moreover, interviews with practitioners presented in the chapter four, which constitute an essential part of the thesis, were conducted together with Dr. Maria Caserio, another team member of the work package mentioned above. She contributed to select interviewees, carry out the interviews, draft the transcripts, and discuss findings. However, the principal input in all these phases of the research comes exclusively from the author. The case studies presented in chapter six were also developed by the author throughout the course of the research programme. The chapter is based on papers that have been published or accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals (Caputo et al, 2012; Caputo et al (forthcoming)), and on conference papers accepted for oral presentation (Caputo and Gaterell, 2011; Caputo and Gaterell, 2012) in two important international conferences: the Sustainable buildings conference - Helsinki, 2011; and the 1st International Conference on Urban Sustainability and Resilience - London, 2012. Likewise, chapter five introducing the Urban Futures method as well as the process of selection and modification of the future scenarios that are at its heart, is based on papers published in peer-reviewed journals, and on a book dedicated to the Urban Futures method printed by the Building Research Establishment, which the author has co-authored (Hunt et al, 2012; Boyko et al, 2012; Lombardi et al, 2012). Finally, chapter three and four presenting the literature review and the interviews to practitioners are based on an article submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, which the author has revised in response to reviewers’ comments and that is in the course of resubmission (Caputo, et al - Designing a resilient urban system. Submitted to Journal of Urbanism).

The importance of modern energy services to development is well established and it extends to deploying renewable energy for electricity to address current global challenges such as lack of access to electricity, poverty, environmental degradation and climate change. No doubt, electricity from renewable energy has negative impacts, but it also has benefits over other energy sources, particularly coal, oil and gas. These benefits have included that it is generally environmentally benign, it is vast, free, and supports standalone technologies. Thus avoiding costs associated with expanding the grid network. Hence, the idea that enhanced deployment of renewable energy for electricity can drive sustainable development in countries such as Nigeria, where amidst global concerns about climate change, modern access to electricity is low and energy supply for basic tasks such as cooking and cooling are from energy sources harnessed unsustainably or is itself not sustainable. In addition, other problems in Nigeria include high poverty and unemployment rates, environment degradation, destruction of biodiversity and natural ecosystem, corruption, lack of infrastructure, and dwindling government revenue profiles. Yet, the country has significant energy resources, renewables and non-renewables through which it can presumably meet all its energy needs. Nigeria enacted the Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSRA) in March 2005 to give statutory support to its National Electric Power Policy, (NEPP) which, inter alia, sought to promote expanded access to electricity, with minimum adverse impact on the environment. Given the benefits of renewable electricity, and the policy objectives on electricity development in Nigeria, this thesis examines the ability of Nigeria's Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSRA) 2005 to enhance the deployment of renewable energy for electricity and thereby foster sustainable development in the country.