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The economic disruptions from the Ukraine war have intensified short term concerns about energy and food security, as well as access to critical minerals. Climate security is also increasingly urgent. This paper urges governments to speed up, not slow down, transitions away from fossil fuels and toward more sustainable development patterns. The war...

Open waste burning is a widespread practice that is provoked by a lack of systematic waste collection, the unavailability of other disposal options, and inadequate land for the final disposal of the collected waste, especially in low- and middle-income countries. From a global perspective, two billion people have no waste collection at all, and the...

The sound management of healthcare waste (HCW) has been receiving increasing global attention, now even more so given the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic. Uncontrolled fluctuations in generation quantities, the composition of HCW as well as the significant impacts it poses on public health and the environment require a more dynamic and cohesive...

This study’s objective is to examine how ASEAN countries reported their environment-related policies for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs), and a dataset of their environmental policies was developed. This is a necessary first step in analyzing the reasons for insufficient progress on the...

The rapid growth in microplastic pollution research is influencing funding priorities, environmental policy, and public perceptions of risks to water quality and environmental and human health. Ensuring that environmental microplastics research data are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) is essential to inform policy and...

A city region is a unit comprising an urban core and surrounding peri-urban and, occasionally, rural areas. The Regional Circulating and Ecological Sphere (R-CES) proposed by the Japanese government is a guiding approach for policymaking that prioritises the harmonised flow of resources between urban and rural areas, low-carbon society, circular...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present a complex system of 17 goals and 169 individual targets whose interactions can be described in terms of co-benefits and trade-offs between policy actions. We analyse in detail target-by-target interlinkage networks established by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) SDG...

1. The ASEAN State of Climate Change Report (ASCCR) presented ASEAN’s mitigation goal: i) Achieve net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as early as possible in the latter half of the 21st century; and ii) Cap peak GHG emissions as soon as possible after 2030 to ensure the net-zero GHG emission goal is met on schedule. 2. However, the updated...

Under the Paris Agreement, the Jakarta city government as non-state actor is preparing the Indonesia first longterm strategy at sub-national/province level through the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) to achieve Jakarta’s target 2050. The strategy was developed based on the existing masterplan and future development plan. The article aims to...

Agricultural certification schemes are increasingly requiring concession holders to prevent deforestation when they develop plantations but do not sufficiently address forest restoration, which is necessary to prevent further biodiversity loss. This policy brief recommends, by focusing on palm oil, that agricultural certification schemes strengthen...