COVID-19 Impacts and Sustainability Strategies for Regional Recovery in Southeast Asia: Challenges and Opportunities

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis is threatening our progressive social, ecological and economic development toward achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Studies of its impacts on sustainable development in emerging economies and on fast-growing regional development, such as Southeast Asia or the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN), are scarce to date. This paper aims to investigate the COVID-19 impacts and identify challenges and opportunities for possible sustainable recovery solutions with respect to the UN SDGs. We employed a qualitative research method through analytical literature reviews and in-depth interviews with 33 organizations. Our results reveal various pandemic effects, challenges and opportunities for cooperative regional sustainability development and recovery strategies, such as intra-trade strategy, green economy and public–private–people partnerships. The findings provide practical guidance on policy implications for transformative regional sustainability and innovative recovery strategies to achieve the sustainable development agendas (i.e., ASEAN Community Vision 2025 and UN 2030 Agenda). Overall, the paper contributes to advance our limited understanding in this realm and benefits diverse stakeholders toward our sustainable futures.

Students as Change Agents for Community–University Sustainability Transition Partnerships

While higher education institutions play a role in regional sustainability transitions, community–university partnerships for sustainability may be underdeveloped and fraught. Moreover, the specific role of students in building and strengthening those partnerships remains little explored. This research occurred in Laramie, Wyoming—the first community to resolve to pursue carbon neutrality in the top coal-producing state in the U.S.—amidst declining state revenue and absent any formal community–university sustainability partnership. Drawing on a community resilience framework and the social-theoretical construct of agency, we examined an informal, multi-year partnership developed through a project-based, community-engaged Campus Sustainability course at the University of Wyoming. Through a chronological sequence case study, we synthesized autoethnography, document analysis, and semi-structured interview methods involving community and university stakeholder and student participants. We found that students, rather than other university actors, played a vital bridging role in absence of a formal community–university sustainability partnership. They also served in a catalyzing role as change agents alongside community stakeholders, providing the potential to develop stronger community–university partnerships and advance sustainability transitions across other Wyoming communities. Findings suggest a need to keenly attend to power dynamics and whose agency is driving higher education institutions’ roles in regional sustainability transitions in specific contexts.

Sustainable Shift from Centralized to Participatory Higher Education in Post-Soviet Countries: A Systematic Literature Review

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, higher education (HE) in post-Soviet reality continues to face complex challenges, including hierarchical structures, antiquated teaching methods, and lack of international standards. In the meantime, in the US and in Europe, HE has recently focused on participatory curriculum development (PCD) and programs that seek to directly connect student learning to “real-world” problems, accelerating positive change in curricula and through their contributions to regional communities. Accepted into the Bologna Process—the standardization of European HE—Armenian HE institutions struggle to satisfy requirements and related sustainable development goals with centralized standards, inhibiting them from being internationally competitive and regional sustainability change agents. In this article, we examine post-Soviet HE development since 1991 and challenges, with a particular focus on Armenia; what participatory curriculum building may offer; and how it contributes to HE and regional sustainability transitions. A systematic literature review was applied, using specific combinations of important terms restricting the search with criteria such as language, year of publication, and descriptive or critical in nature. The results illustrate the status quo of post-Soviet HE, synthesize current barriers of HE as potential change agents, and highlight PCD as a way to overcome these barriers.

Comparing Regional Sustainability and Transportation Sustainability at the Metropolitan Level in the U.S. using Artificial Neural Network Clustering Techniques

Regional sustainability and transportation sustainability have been intensely discussed and analyzed in recent decades. Though the use of indicators has been adopted in those models, debates continue on what indicators should be used and how to optimize the number of indicators. This results in the lack of a comprehensive and efficient method to assess and compare the sustainability of a sub-system, such as transportation system, and overall regional sustainability. A thorough literature review is conducted to identify indicators used to assess regional sustainability and transportation sustainability. Then, based on the available data, two sets of indicators for regional sustainability and transportation sustainability are identified and calculated respectively for the 382 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the U.S. A self-organizing map, which is a type of artificial neural network, is used to cluster the MSAs and compare their regional sustainability and transportation sustainability as well as to investigate the relationships among indicators. The results show that MSAs with a higher score on regional sustainability do not necessarily have a higher score on transportation sustainability. Some MSAs that are geographically close to each other have similar scores in regional sustainability and transportation sustainability. These findings provide insights to decision makers that the assessment of sustainability should consider both correlation and heterogeneity of different indicators within a region. Therefore, it is important to develop a comprehensive and efficient method to evaluate the role of sustainability in one urban sub-system, such as transportation, in the overall regional sustainability.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ВПЛИВУ ДІЯЛЬНОСТІ СІЛЬСЬКОГОСПОДАРСЬКИХ ПІДПРИЄМСТВ НА СТАЛИЙ РОЗВИТОК РЕГІОНІВ

The article substantiates the relevance of sustainable development in modern business settings. The study provides calculation of indices of economic, environmental and social sustainability of regions in the 2017–2019 period along with suggesting an algorithm for a multifactor dynamic regression modeling method application. Within the scope of this research, the impact of agribusiness companies’ performances on economic, environmental and social sustainability of regions has been measured to integrate them as the key elements of aggregated indices of regional sustainable development. The greatest influence among the studied indicators on the economic, ecological and social sustainability of the region was revealed. To attain the research agenda, a methodological approach based on the calculation of indices and growth rates for relevant economic, social and environmental indicators has been employed. The findings reveal that the greatest impact on regional economic sustainability have the following indicators: total output of roots, tubers, vegetables and cucurbits produced by food manufacturing companies of all categories; the crop area for harvesting grain and grain legumes; total output of industrial crops; the area for forage crops harvesting. The greatest impact on environmental regional sustainability is attributed to the following indicators: the crop area for harvesting roots, tubers, vegetables and cucurbits; the area where the pesticides were applied. The greatest impact on social regional sustainability among all indicators under study has been demonstrated by the output of grain and grain legumes and the crop area for harvesting industrial crops. Based on the research findings, in the context of agribusiness strategic planning, the study provides a reasoned argument as to the critical need to adhere to the basic principles of sustainable development to ensure further socioeconomic growth in rural areas.

Damage-cost assessment of vernacular buildings against coastal flooding

<p>Coastlines across the globe have been experiencing threats due to rising sea-level. The global average rise in the annual sea level is projected to be 2 -3 mm putting the coastlines across the globe into a threat. South-East Asian countries would experience sea-level variation from 1.5 mm to 4.4 mm per year, exacerbating inundation risk due to tidal anomalies. Many of these countries bear relatively higher population density and fall under developing economy – hence under-equipped to follow proactive strategies for adaptation.</p><p>Recurring flood hazard incapacitates regional sustainability. Rapidly changing climate scenarios further add to the climate-hazard sensitivity by increasing the frequency of extremes. The coastal communities experience multiple threats of such climate sensitivity due to rising sea-level and high tide anomalies In the form of loss of life and livelihood, overbearing losses from disaster-related damages to the infrastructure damages. Particularly those associated with residential building impose significant liability on marginal groups, presenting ‘disaster recovery’ nearly an impossible target to achieve. Therefore, damage reduction becomes an inevitable parameter for disaster risk reduction (DRR).</p><p>This research presents a methodology for the assessment of vernacular building typology in coastal areas of Sundarbans in eastern India. The area adjoining the Bay of Bengal is the part of largest Mangrove delta in the world The case area, Sagar Island has 75 percent of its population residing within traditional housing system that is now under potential economic stress due to reoccurring floods. The process begins with probing insight on the damage and failure pattern induced by floodwater to the housing and helps in the development of a systematic framework for ‘damage preventing intervention’ for primary building typology. The study categorizes damage stages associated with the high tide flooding levels using the synthetic method of data collection. This is followed by damage cost calculation for the flood levels considering the available remedies. Therefore, suggesting a proactive approach for disaster resilient design depending on robustness and cost-effectiveness of the chosen remedies. As the vernacular buildings are still a popular habitat choice in various parts of developing/ urbanizing South Asia, the research finds a generic application for upgrading vernacular housing design standards for regional sustainability.</p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: flood hazard, high tide flooding, climate change, vernacular housing, damage assessment</p>