Vol. 8, No. 3 (2020): Regular Issue

The Sustainable DevelopmentGoals by the United Nations include a global target for Improved Water Source to reach 100% of population by 2030. There are still millions of people lacking the improved access to drinking water. We use the convergence methodology for 203 countries to determine whether the water shortage gap between water-rich versus water-poor countries has narrowed during 2000 to 2015. Results of our analysis show the narrowing of water shortage gaps. However, significant variations are found among income and regional subgroups. Implications of our findings indicate the reduction of water shortage gap within appropriate subgroups is needed. In particular, a set of policy recommendations are presented for sub Saharan Africa region where improvement of water supply is urgently needed.

Sheep and goat farming represent a non-negligible share of the worldwide livestock productions. Ovine rearing, although knowing time periods of growth and descents, is today gaining more interest especially with regards of milk and dairy products. This is due to the rediscovery of the economic, social and environmental potential of this type of farming and its products. This work aims to analyze goat farming and its productions using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. LCA makes it possible to evaluate and understand the environmental impacts of livestock farming and dairy processing throughout all the phases of their production. The purpose is to highlight and localize the opportunities for reducing the environmental impacts; compare similar products to each other; evaluate and compare the effects related to different environmental and resource management policies. Two zootechnical companies, located in the province of Salerno (Italy), are investigated. The production process analyzed is precisely that of goat cheese, specifically the “Cacioricotta Cilentana”, a very well-known kind of Italian cheese. The characteristics of goat breeding and the production of Cacioricotta Cilentana are examined in this study. The similarities and differences between the two companies have been highlighted, linked to the breeding, cheese making and sale phases of the finished product. Applying the LCA approach, the environmental impacts of the production process were analyzed and quantified, according to the ReCiPe Midpoint (H) method to derive impact indicators relating to the most significant impact categories (including climate change, human toxicity, acidification, depletion of fossil resources, depletion of water resources). The evaluation highlights the critical points of the process so as to be able to suggest improvement options.

This study aims to explore the prevalence of students’ and teachers’ ideas about global warming and the use of renewable energy technology in Gorontalo, Indonesia. Employing a non-experimental quantitative approach, the data were collected from 1522 respondents and analyzed with the WINSTEPS 3.73 Rasch software. This study reports that 97.6% and 76.08% of the respondents respectively understand the concepts of global warming and renewable energy from the internet (45%) and formal education (<40%). Respondents’ level/status of education, gender, and hometown cause some differences in their ideas prevalence. High school students consider that utilizing renewable energy is not crucial; they also do not concern about global warming effects and the environment. Teachers and university students do not believe that using renewable energy can produce sustainable energy; they also question the safety of renewable energy technology. These findings indicate the needs for a renewable energy literacy program in formal education in Indonesia.

Global warming has a massive bearing on living beings, the country and environment alike. The primary perpetrator of global warming is carbon dioxide emission. This paper tries to find out the interrelationship between GDP growth and carbon dioxide emissions and the potential of renewable energy use to reduce carbon dioxide emission from industrial activities in the short and long-run. The interrelationship between GDP growth and CO2 emission has traced in this paper. Auto-Regressive Distributive Lag of cointegration model has been used to show the causal relationship among growth variables and CO2 emission. The long-run and short-run relationship of variables have been analyzed by using time series data from 1971 to 2016. This study basically focuses on the existence of EKC in India. One of the objectives of this paper is to find out the existence of renewable energy to reduce CO2 emission in India. The Positive coefficient of renewable energy seen in the findings of the study could be due to the lack of data and also due to the limited renewable resources in India during that period. It has also been noticed that energy consumption and urban population have a negative impact air pollution parameter, thus directing towards higher emission standards and emphasizing the need for transforming fossil fuel-based energy profile into one of renewable energy. The results of the study on trade openness and renewable energy suggest that India should moderate its levels of energy-intensive trade and focus on a trade involving clean energy technologies, which can be sustained only by increasing endogenous renewable energy capacity.

Anaerobic digestion of food waste is aimed both at the reduction of the volume of waste and the production of methane. Carbonaceous additives such as activated carbons were widely studied as enhancer of methane production. In this paper a low-cost alternative additive, the biochar, was proposed to assess its use for improving both the operational stability and the energetic output of anaerobic digestion. The main objective of the present work is to assess and quantify the increase of CH4 yields induced by the biochar addition and to identify all the main mechanisms responsible of this improvement. The risk related to the Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons release from biochar in the anaerobic digestion media was discussed as well. To this aim, biochar obtained from steam assisted slow pyrolysis of Populus nigra L. up to 600 °C was used. Anaerobic digestion of food waste mixture was carried out in a batch reactor in mesophilic conditions (37 °C). Four tests were conducted by adding 0, 1, 4 and 10 wt% of biochar on wet food waste mixture basis. Results showed that more CH4 is produced even in the first hours of the anaerobic digestion test when 10 wt% of biochar was added to the food waste mixture (about 65 wt% more at 96 h), thus denoting a reduction of the lag phase. A total increase of CH4 yield of 14 and 42% when 4 and 10 wt% of biochar was added to the food waste mixture. In conclusion, analyses of both the liquid phase during the tests and biochar sampled at the end of anaerobic digestion process revealed that biochar favored the decomposition of acetic acid, adsorbed some inhibitors such as butyric acid, and provided a suitable habitat for microbial colonization.

The aim of the paper is to analyse the green economy as a paradigm of sustainable development of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The paper found that the use of alternative energy is an integral part of the development of the green economy. It is determined that the total capacity of renewable energy sources in the world until 2024 will increase by 50%. The necessary elements of the transition to the green economy are the development of new financial instruments, namely, payments for ecosystem services, green banking, stocks and bonds, markets for the sale of intellectual property in environmental technologies.

Raw coconut jelly is a popular byproduct of the coconut processing industry in the Asia Pacific which can enhance the added economic value for the local families in the rural area. However, the coconut jelly production has resulted in significant environmental impacts, particularly to the aquatic environment due to its heavily polluted wastewater e.g. very high values of COD (up to 120,000 mg/l), of total nitrogen (up to 1,740 mg/l), and of total phosphorus (up to 64 mg/l). The available wastewater treatment technology for such type of wastewater is likely to be not economically efficient due to the small-scale production at craft villages in the developing countries. This study developed and demonstrated an integrated eco-model for small (family) scale production of raw coconut jelly in craft villages which applied Cleaner Production sollutions for pollution prevention on the basis of available conditions at the local family. The system demonstration showed a win-win solution for family with major benefits by reduction of 90% of pollutants (i.e 27 kg COD, 21.4 kg BOD5, approx. 7 kg N, 113 g P and 28 kg SO42−for one production batch), as well as the other benefit by major reduction of 90 % of investment and operating costs of the wastewater treatment plant.