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Food security and energy transition are among the current major global environmental challenges. Although these issues individually are significant in their own right, they are connected to each other in a nexus with different interrelationships and dependencies. In the quest for non-fossil alternatives for energy, cultivation of bioenergy crops has become an important part of the energy policy in many countries. In this regard, the use of fertile agricultural land for growing crops for energy production rather than for food supply affects the global food security. Recent conflicts and the geopolitical crisis in Europe, leading to increased food, fuel, and fertiliser prices, the existing climate crisis, and the crisis caused due to the COVID-19 pandemic, have further reinforced the understanding of this nexus, with certain countries mulling limiting biofuel production from agricultural land and others banning food grain exports to safeguard food supply. The idea of growing non-food energy crops on marginal lands in general and closed landfill sites in particular is hence ever more relevant, to avoid land-use concurrence between food needs and energy needs. Landfilling has been the dominant waste management strategy until recently in European countries and is still the dominant mode of waste management in low-income regions like South Asia. This paper provides a review of the economic as well as environmental benefits of growing Ricinus communis L., Jatropha curcas L., and Populus deltoides as energy crops on closed landfill sites in the South Asian context. While as the cultivation of Miscanthus X Giganteus, Silphium perfoliatum L., and Panicum virgatum (Switchgrass) is reviewed in the European context. The cultivation of non-food energy crops like these on closed landfill sites and marginal lands is presented as a potential component of an integrated food-energy policy, with an increased relevance in the current times. In the current times of multiple crises, this measure is of increasing relevance as a part of the overall strategy to achieve resilience and environmental sustainability. Food security and energy transition are among the current major global environmental challenges. Although these issues individually are significant in their own right, they are connected to each other in a nexus with different interrelationships and dependencies. In the quest for non-fossil alternatives for energy, cultivation of bioenergy crops has become an important part of the energy policy in many countries. In this regard, the use of fertile agricultural land for growing crops for energy production rather than for food supply affects the global food security. Recent conflicts and the geopolitical crisis in Europe, leading to increased food, fuel, and fertiliser prices, the existing climate crisis, and the crisis caused due to the COVID-19 pandemic, have further reinforced the understanding of this nexus, with certain countries mulling limiting biofuel production from agricultural land and others banning food grain exports to safeguard food supply. The idea of growing non-food energy crops on marginal lands in general and closed landfill sites in particular is hence ever more relevant, to avoid land-use concurrence between food needs and energy needs. Landfilling has been the dominant waste management strategy until recently in European countries and is still the dominant mode of waste management in low-income regions like South Asia. This paper provides a review of the economic as well as environmental benefits of growing Ricinus communis L., Jatropha curcas L., and Populus deltoides as energy crops on closed landfill sites in the South Asian context. While as the cultivation of Miscanthus X Giganteus, Silphium perfoliatum L., and Panicum virgatum (Switchgrass) is reviewed in the European context. The cultivation of non-food energy crops like these on closed landfill sites and marginal lands is presented as a potential component of an integrated food-energy policy, with an increased relevance in the current times. In the current times of multiple crises, this measure is of increasing relevance as a part of the overall strategy to achieve resilience and environmental sustainability.

Currently, one in eight people live in neighborhoods with social inequality and around one billion people live in precarious conditions. The significance of where and how to live and in what physical, spatial, social, and urban conditions has become very important for millions of families around the world because of mandatory confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, many homes in poor condition do not meet the basic requirements for residential environments in the current framework. Theoretical models for the urban evaluation of this phenomenon are a necessary starting point for urban renewal and sustainability. This study aims to generate a model for evaluating homes in a situation of social inequality (hereinafter Vrs) with indicators on physical, spatial, environmental, and social aspects. The methodology used in this study evaluates housing, taking into consideration habitability factors (physical, spatial, and constructive characteristics), as well as the qualitative characteristics assessing the satisfaction of users with the adaptation and transformation of the housing and its surroundings. The application of 51 indicators distributed in four previous parameters was established for this study. This quantification identifies the deficiencies of the dwellings and sets the guidelines for the establishment of future rehabilitation policies for adapting the dwellings to current and emergency scenarios. The innovation of this study is the construction of a tool for social research surveys designed to include individual indicators from the dwellings’ users, to provide a more dependable representation of the problems found in Vrs. The results of this research identified the deficiencies of precarious housing and could be used for applying effective proposals for improvement of habitability and their surroundings in the future. Furthermore, the results showed that when all the indicators were considered, the level of lag reached would be similar to that of a real housing situation, further confirming the suitability of the methodology applied in this investigation.

Abstract Urban resilience (UR) is a central concept in enabling cities to be prepared for disasters and unexpected events caused by climate change-induced extreme weather conditions. The field is dedicated to developing solutions and models in this regard. In particular, the emergence of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has threatened certain industries and has compelled cities to re-evaluate and address resilience. This study aims to provide an overview of the subject by examining the academic and industrial literature on UR, categorizing publications, analyzing major trends, as well as highlighting gaps and providing future research recommendations. In this context, 146 journal articles and 9 industrial reports published up to the end of 2020 were examined. Journal articles have been examined under three headings as literature reviews, conceptual models, and analytical models. The approaches and analytical techniques discussed in the field are also examined in the review. These examinations and classifications constitute the originality of the study. Examination of industrial reports has provided us with the opportunity to understand the practices discussed and suggested by practitioners in this field. The results show that the most commonly arising issue in UR is climate change. Finally, the research gaps and future suggestions are presented.

With the advent of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) which has spread to the majority of countries across the world, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a global pandemic on 11 March 2020. Governments all over the world, including in southern Africa, introduced measures such as the banning of large gatherings, closure of borders, schools and institutions of higher learning to curb the spread of COVID-19. To ensure ongoing teaching and learning, institutions of higher learning made resolutions to transition to remote/online teaching and learning. While online education has long preceded the pandemic, the spiraling of COVID-19 all over the world resulted in the upscaling of online teaching and learning in higher education institutions. Mandatory online teaching and learning was a relatively new practice to most lecturers and students in southern Africa. Drawing on two case stories from Botswana and Namibia, this paper offers a think piece on the shifts to online learning, considering assumptions, implications and possibilities for quality learning in teacher education, through a reflection by teacher educators of environment and sustainability courses. The assumptions in online learning were that students and teacher educators had the capacity and infrastructure for remote/online teaching and learning. This paper thus opens up opportunities for institutions of higher learning to scale up their Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure and support for both students and teacher educators for online teaching and learning which have the potential to improve on quality education during times of crisis. Keywords: Online teaching and learning, ICT infrastructure, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), quality education

No abstract available.

During the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, alcohol consumption increased markedly. Nearly one in four adults reported drinking more alcohol to cope with stress. Chronic alcohol abuse is now recognized as a factor complicating the course of acute respiratory distress syndrome and increasing mortality. To investigate the mechanisms behind this interaction, a combined acute respiratory distress syndrome and chronic alcohol abuse mouse model was developed by intratracheally instilling the subunit 1 (S1) of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (S1SP) in K18-human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) transgenic mice that express the human ACE2 receptor for SARS-CoV-2 and were kept on an ethanol diet. Seventy-two hours after S1SP instillation, mice on an ethanol diet showed a strong decrease in body weight, a dramatic increase in white blood cell content of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, and an augmented cytokine storm, compared with S1SP-treated mice on a control diet. Histologic examination of lung tissue showed abnormal recruitment of immune cells in the alveolar space, abnormal parenchymal architecture, and worsening Ashcroft score in S1SP- and alcohol-treated animals. Along with the activation of proinflammatory biomarkers [NF-κB, STAT3, NLR family pyrin domain-containing protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome], lung tissue homogenates from mice on an alcohol diet showed overexpression of ACE2 compared with mice on a control diet. This model could be useful for the development of therapeutic approaches against alcohol-exacerbated coronavirus disease 2019.

  El presente artículo habla sobre la aplicación de los sistemas complejos como un instrumento de análisis en la actividad turística. En el primer apartado se analizaron los conceptos y paradigmas del cambio climático en relación con el turismo. En el año 2020, el turismo fue uno de los sectores económicos más afectados por la restricción sanitaria (COVID-19). Lo cual trajo consigo una situación aún más complicada por los embates de innumerables fenómenos hidrometeorológicos extremos. La metodología propuesta se refiere a una exhaustiva revisión de los elementos que conforman el proceso de hacer turismo, tanto como, de la problemática que enfrenta en los procesos de ordenación y planeación del territorio. El producto de nuestra investigación fue proponer un modelo de análisis para las diferentes variantes del turismo, que juegan un papel muy importante en los procesos de configuración de la ciudad y el territorio. Los resultados de esta investigación pueden aplicarse como un instrumento de evaluación Inmersos en el paradigma del desarrollo sustentable.

After consulting the relevant scientific literature and the reports of international institutions, the authors trace the environmental and social causes behind the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, describing its impacts and suggesting some routes to a sustainable recovery. The starting point is the finding that the world is experiencing a sustainability crisis. Sustainability can be said to “always rings twice”: the first “ring” is an alert of its absence, which probably determined the explosion of the pandemic crisis (and its consequences and impacts), while the second “ring” is presenting an opportunity to change the current development model. To fully understand the pandemic’s origins, the links between the scientific knowledge on the origin of the virus and the holistic visions for sustainable development must be assessed, to focus on the causes (and not on the symptoms) of the pandemic, which the scientific community had widely predicted. The loss of biodiversity, population trends and the direct and indirect consequences of climate change have deeply affected the balance of ecosystems and attacked the natural “buffer” that separated humans from animal species that are reservoir hosts of viruses. These causes found fertile ground in the great human mobility of 21st century economic globalisation and in the environmental and social conditions in some of the world’s heavily industrialised areas. This set of conditions, combined with a general short-circuiting of border controls between countries, allowed the epidemic to evolve into a pandemic and become more lethal in the process. What we are currently experiencing is unfortunately the mother of all the negative externalities associated with a social and economic development model that has become unsustainable. The last part of the article outlines the main elements for a sustainable recovery that is coherent with the majority of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. They are grouped in strategic directions and many are now widely shared.