scholarly journals Small-medium enterprise experiences of financial service in urban and rural settings : a phenomenological study of a changing community finance landscape and the sustainable finance narrative

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Christine Sanders

Relationships between small-medium size businesses ('SME') and community banks are complex, meaningful, and often described as characteristically "opaque". This study offers a conceptual framework for exploring this "opaqueness" from the perspective of SMEs and community financiers engaged in the process of community finance. Insights into the experiential dynamics of SMEs and community financiers co-navigating the financial service landscape offers an exploratory frame for investigations of interactive capacity, knowledge formation, and reflexive orientations. The implications of what transpires between SMEs and their community financiers can be far-reaching and of particular importance as the financial service landscape evolves to respond to calls for more 'sustainable finance' to support the goals of Agenda 2030, conveyed as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The study findings suggest that multi-dimensional aspects of community financee not well understood. Future research and practitioner ideation is suggested around the importance of placing community finance, as a facilitative process, within emerging 'sustainable finance' frameworks. Doing so offers an enhanced social-ecological lens for exploring the role, effects, and effectiveness of community finance in the 21st century.

Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rupert J. Baumgartner

The United Nations adopted the Agenda 2030 with its core element, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in September 2015. In order to achieve these goals within the coming years, intense efforts are required by all political and societal actors. Although the first definitions of sustainable development referred to the forest sector, the question remains: what contribution can forestry make to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals? Therefore, the direct positive and negative effects of forestry itself on sustainability are analyzed, and it is discussed how sustainable forest management could contribute to achieving other Sustainable Development Goals in addition to SDG 15. This analysis reveals that forestry plays a dual role, i.e., forestry can achieve positive sustainability effects but can also have negative impacts. It is thus recommended to use integrated assessment approaches to analyze whether a specific forest-related policy or strategy is contributing to sustainable development. Beside quantitative integrated assessments, the use of qualitative frameworks like the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development is proposed. It is also suggested to operationalize the concept of second-order sustainability performance for the forest sector in future research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5514
Author(s):  
Irantzu Recalde-Esnoz ◽  
Daniel Ferrández ◽  
Carlos Morón ◽  
Guadalupe Dorado

The building sector is one of the most relevant at world level in view of the percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) concerned, as well as the number of new jobs created. Nevertheless, it is a completely male-dominated industry. Different institutions and organisms, such as the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals, struggle to reduce gender inequality in different environments, including the working one. Aligned with these goals, this study provides the data exploited from the first survey regarding gender inequality within the professionals of the building engineering field in the Spanish population as a whole. This survey was developed in 2018 by the Spanish General Council of Technical Architecture and it was sent to its members. The sample involved 1353 cases. For this data mining, bivariate analyses were conducted in order to subsequently carry out a factor analysis and the socio–demographic composition of the dimensions found. Results exposed statistically meaningful differences in the eyes of women and men about those factors which facilitate practice and continuity in the profession. The most relevant conclusions drawn from the factor analysis reflect the existence of three factors: (1) work competences, (2) social capital and (3) physical appearance and being a man, dimensions in which women and men’s opinion was unevenly distributed.


The chapter argues that inequality between men and women has led to the gap in income and poverty for women. Gender inequality and women's empowerment have, therefore, become one of the 17 pillars of the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda 2030. This chapter, therefore, examines the global performances on gender inequality index (GII) and the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda 2030, regional performance and the Sustainable Development Goals, the top best performers on gender gap parity versus the worst performers on gender gap parity, and sub-national performances and global rankings. Also, this chapter examines the challenges of achieving gender equality by 2030 along with policy options for achieving gender equality in the year 2030.


2021 ◽  
pp. 89-112
Author(s):  
Jennifer E. Lansford ◽  
W. Andrew Rothenberg ◽  
Sombat Tapanya ◽  
Liliana Maria Uribe Tirado ◽  
Saengduean Yotanyamaneewong ◽  
...  

This chapter uses evidence from the Parenting Across Cultures (PAC) project to illustrate ways in which longitudinal data can help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs.) The chapter begins by providing an overview of the research questions that have guided the international PAC as well as a description of the participants, procedures, and measures. Next, empirical findings from PAC are summarized to illustrate implications for six specific SDGs related to child and adolescent development in relation to education, poverty, gender, mental health, and well-being. Then the chapter describes how longitudinal data offer advantages over cross-sectional data in operationalizing SDG targets and implementing the SDGs. Finally, limitations, future research directions, and conclusions are provided.


Author(s):  
Ronald Labonté ◽  
Arne Ruckert

A long-standing and fundamental facet of global governance for health has been the development of an international human rights framework. Arising from the aftermath of World War II, human rights are comprised of several different covenants that constitute international law, albeit lacking in international enforcement measures. When these rights are instantiated within national laws or constitutions, however, they become justiciable within a country’s legal system. There are also global bodies responsible for oversight of their implementation. Their strength, as with that of the Sustainable Development Goals’ Agenda 2030, may rest more on their normative force—how the world’s people imperfectly expressed through their governments believe the world should work and look like. Given a growing illiberal temper in the emerging post-truth world, whether the norms embedded in human rights law can rise to the challenge of ‘taming’ globalization’s neoliberal underpinnings is a pivotal question still awaiting a firm answer.


2022 ◽  
pp. 269-288
Author(s):  
Parul Bhyan ◽  
Bhavna Shrivastava ◽  
Nand Kumar

Sustainable development is a requisite for future generation, as increasing urbanization, destruction of natural resources by anthropic activities, degrading ecosystems for the sake of present economic development at cost of environmental exploitation are increasing by each passing day on earth. The goal of this chapter is to provide meaningful insights for policy-makers and decision-makers towards sustainable development in the construction industry. This study is first-of-its-kind study focusing on the Sustainable Developments Goals and sustainability dimensions and their criteria and indicators in one compilation through literature study. The study concludes that there is a need to integrate the construction industry into the Sustainable Development Goals and their targets to test the built environment sustainability and there is a need to develop the most adequate frameworks for commencing the topic. Two possible frameworks suggested for future research recommendation needed for the Indian context to enhance sustainability within construction industry are based on LCSA and MCDM analysis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7805
Author(s):  
Maurizio Sajeva ◽  
Marjo Maidell ◽  
Jonne Kotta ◽  
Anneliis Peterson

The isolation of science disciplines and the weak integration between science, policy and society represent main challenges for sustainable human development. If, on the one hand, the specialization of science has produced higher levels of knowledge, on the other hand, the whole picture of the complex interactions between systems has suffered. Economic and natural sciences are, on matters of sustainable development, strongly divergent, and the interface informing decision-making is weak. This downplays uncertainty and creates room for entrenched political positions, compromising evidence-based decision-making and putting the urgent need to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of Agenda 2030 at risk. This article presents the heterodox Eco-GAME framework for interconnecting science through trans-disciplinary social-learning and meta-evaluation of scientific knowledge in pursuit of SDGs. The framework is tested and refined in the BONUS MARES project by systematic literature analysis, participatory workshops, and semi-structured interviews, in relation to the specific habitats of Baltic Sea mussel reefs, seagrass beds and macroalgae ecosystem services produced and methods applied. The results, acknowledging the urgency of interfacing science, policy and society, validate the Eco-GAME as a framework for this purpose and present a multi-dimensional system of indicators as a further development.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Cappa ◽  
Federica Rosso ◽  
Antonio Capaldo

As organizations are increasingly involving individuals across their boundaries in the generation of new knowledge, crowd involvement can also be beneficial to cultural heritage organizations. We argue that in an “Open Innovation in Science” approach, visitors can contribute to generate new scientific knowledge concerning their behavior and preferences, by which museum managers can re-design the cultural offerings of their institutions in ways that generate major economic and social impacts. Accordingly, we advance visitor-sensing as a novel framework in which museum managers leverage digital technologies to collect visitors’ ideas, preferences, and feedback in order to improve path design and the organization of artwork in exhibitions, and to shape a more satisfying museum experience for visitors. We contend that visitor-sensing has the potential to yield higher numbers of visitors, with positive impacts in terms of increased revenues and increased literacy of the general public, thus benefiting the economic and social sustainability of cultural organizations towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals outlined in the Agenda 2030.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierluca Vitale ◽  
Vincenzo Alfano ◽  
Tommaso Pastore ◽  
Costantino Menna ◽  
Pietro Maffettone ◽  
...  

Several frameworks have been developed for mitigating the environmental impact of human activities. Among them, possibly the most forward-thinking are the Sustainable Development Goals set out in UN Agenda 2030, which are often cited by stakeholders at various levels. Nevertheless, when it comes to policy tools, defining goals relating to sustainability is not straightforward. In this contribution, we use a mathematical framework to compare the goals of Agenda 2030 with the assessments possible with three different building-rating systems, BREEAM, LEED and ITACA. Our results show that these tools address sustainability very differently to the intentions of the SDGs. However, a number of minor changes could easily make the assessments produced by these evaluation systems on this issue more complete.


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