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Original research article, unveiling the research landscape of sustainable development goals and their inclusion in higher education institutions and research centers: major trends in 2000–2017.

• 1 Department of Industrial Management, Industrial Design and Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, University of Gävle, Gävle, Sweden
• 2 Department of Biology, Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM), Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal
• 3 Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Leiria, Portugal
• 4 Life Quality Research Centre, Polytechnic Institute of Santarém, Santarém, Portugal
• 5 Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands
• 6 Department of Science and Innovation-National Research Foundation of South Africa Centre of Excellence in Scientometrics and STI Policy (SciSTP), Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) have become the international framework for sustainability policy. Its legacy is linked with the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), established in 2000. In this paper a scientometric analysis was conducted to: (1) Present a new methodological approach to identify the research output related to both SDGs and MDGs (M&SDGs) from 2000 to 2017, with the aim of mapping the global research related to M&SDGs; (2) Describe the thematic specialization based on keyword co-occurrence analysis and citation bursts; and (3) Classify the scientific output into individual SDGs (based on an ad-hoc glossary) and assess SDGs interconnections. Publications conceptually related to M&SDGs (defined by the set of M&SDG core publications and a scientometric expansion based on direct citations) were identified in the in-house CWTS Web of Science database. A total of 25,299 publications were analyzed, of which 21,653 (85.59%) were authored by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) or academic research centers (RCs). The findings reveal the increasing participation of these organizations in this research (660 institutions in 2000–2005 to 1,744 institutions involved in 2012–2017). Some institutions present both a high production and specialization on M&SDG topics (e.g., London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and World Health Organization); and others with a very high specialization although lower production levels (e.g., Stockholm Environment Institute). Regarding the specific topics of research, health (especially in developing countries), women , and socio-economic issues are the most salient. Moreover, it has been observed an important interlinkage in the research outputs of some SDGs (e.g., SDG11 “Sustainable Cities and Communities” and SDG3 “Good Health and Well-Being”). This study provides first evidence of such interconnections, and the results of this study could be useful for policymakers in order to promote a more evidenced-based setting for their research agendas on SDGs.

Introduction

Increasing awareness-building in sustainable development goals.

Sustainability goals have emerged as a global strategy to solve critical world problems, as a result of the global environmental concerns that started in the 1970s. The origin of the notion of sustainable development can be traced back to its most-recognized milestone in 1987; the definition of Sustainable Development in the Brundtland Report 1 . Afterwards, different summits and conferences were held in which sustainability and sustainable development were the core discussions (e.g., Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992). During these early years, sustainable development was a guiding principle to bridge the North-South division ( Siegel and Bastos Lima, 2020 ). However, what was meant by development was replete with competing ideas about its essential aims, together with various theories about its achievement ( Fukuda-Parr and McNeill, 2019 ). In this context, development goals became an unprecedented effort to bridge those divides and find common ground “with a set of ideas as the consensus global norm concerning both the ends and the means of development” ( Fukuda-Parr, 2019 ). These development goals (MDGs and SDGs) are designed with the same principles: (1) Statement of a social political priority ( goal ); (2) Time-bound quantitative aspect to be achieved ( target ); and (3) Measurement tools to monitor progress ( indicator ) ( Fukuda-Parr and McNeill, 2019 ). The goals represent international agreements that create narratives and frame debates about the conceptualization of development challenges ( Fukuda-Parr, 2019 ). It can be argued that the influence of these goals on policy, governments, and other societal stakeholders is mainly driven by their compelling discourse.

The First Development Goals: Millennium Development Goals

In 2000 eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were created at the Millennium Summit, with the ambition of their being achieved by 2015. These MDGs tackled topics such as extreme poverty and hunger, child mortality, and maternal health 2 . They represented an unprecedented effort to tackle the needs of the world's poorest countries. However, MDGs were criticized for: (1) Not being adequately aligned “with human rights standards and principles;” (2) Being formulated in a top-down process, only driven by international organizations and developing country governments; (3) Lacking accountability mechanisms; and (4) Omission of important priorities, i.e., inequality ( International Human Rights Instruments, 2008 ; Fukuda-Parr, 2016 , 2019 ). Another criticism of the MDGs was that they had unsuccessful effects in some important regions, such as Africa ( Easterly, 2009 ). Despite these criticisms, although indeed not all goals were achieved by 2015, some progress was acknowledged ( United Nations, 2015a ). For instance, “the number of people living in extreme poverty has declined by more than half since 1990 and the literacy rate among youth aged 15–24 has increased globally, from 83% in 1990 to 91% in 2015” ( Ki-Moon, 2015 ).

The Present: The Sustainable Development Goals

In 2012, the Conference Rio+20 adopted a 15-year plan called Agenda 2030 (2015–2030), targeting sustainable economic growth, social development, and environmental protection ( United Nations, 2015b ). As a result, Agenda 2030 established 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a deadline in 2030. This agenda was settled as a normative shift ( Fukuda-Parr and McNeill, 2019 ) and has even been institutionalized as a policy paradigm ( Siegel and Bastos Lima, 2020 ). The agenda has 169 targets and various indicators for monitoring their achievement. The topics of these goals cover five critical areas (the so-called 5 P's); People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnership ( United Nations, 2015b ). While MDGs encompassed the notion of development as the North-South project to meet basic needs to end poverty, SDGs reconceptualised development as the “universal aspiration for human progress that is inclusive and sustainable” ( Fukuda-Parr and McNeill, 2019 ). Different from the MDGs, the SDGs pay an increased attention to the interlinkages among different sustainability dimensions and give great attention to inclusiveness ; clearly captured in their motto “No one left behind” ( Siegel and Bastos Lima, 2020 ). In practical terms, SDGs expand with respect to MDGs in: (1) Scope (e.g., there are new goals); (2) Reach (involving developed and developing countries); and (3) Engagement of a larger set of societal actors (e.g., citizen councils) in both their creation and implementation ( Fisher and Fukuda-Parr, 2019 ). However, no specific mechanisms to ensure their applicability across different countries have been settled. One of the main concerns is that SDGs rely on individual countries and the goodwill of their governments on how to pursue and implement each of the goals. In this regard, Siegel and Bastos Lima (2020) pointed out that actual SDG-driven transformations depend on the political context of each country, particularly on how these goals are interpreted and prioritized at the national level. These authors even remarked that despite the very concrete formulation of SDGs, their conceptualization (and we could add, their operationalization ) still leaves room for interpretation. Thus, the pursuing of some specific goals over others by some countries is known as “cherry-picking,” although quite often interpreted as conformity with the whole agenda ( Forestier and Kim, 2020 ). However, the aim of Agenda 2030 and its accomplishment is fundamentally based on the integrative and indivisible nature of the goals ( United Nations, 2015b ), therefore “cherry-picking” should not be an acceptable approach, bringing attention to the relevance of monitoring the engagement and consecution of all SDGs by all countries.

The Role of Monitoring the Achievement of SDGs

In contrast to MDGs, monitoring became a key issue for SDGs. Since the launch of SDGs, an SDG Index 3 has been developed, aiming to evaluate the achievement of each goal across all countries. The SDG index allows identifying priorities for action, support discussions, and debates to identify gaps in the development of the goals. A preliminary set of 330 indicators was introduced in March 2015 ( Hák et al., 2016 ), but only 232 indicators were adopted. This is different from MDGs, in which indicators were only decided on an internal basis 4 . The development of indicators to monitor the achievement of SDGs was based on two parallel processes: (1) Multi-stakeholder public consultation led by the UN General Assembly Open Working Group on SDGs (established in 2013); and (2) Intergovernmental negotiations. Moreover, the indicators developed “come from a mix of official and non-official data sources” (e.g., the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, among others), all subjected to an extensive and rigorous data validation process [ Sachs et al., 2018 , 2019 ]. However, it has been argued that the translation of goals into quantitative indicators can “distort” their meaning, since indicators can be reinterpreted or used to create perverse discourses or incentives ( Fukuda-Parr and McNeill, 2019 ).

Interlinkages Among SDGs

Another distinctive aspect of SDGs in contrast to MDGs is the role of the relationships and interlinkages among the different goals. Several studies already analyzed the interlinkages and interdependencies between pairs of SDGs, both across or within SDGs, particularly regarding the effects that achieving one goal may have on the ability to achieve others. Pradhan et al. (2017) analyzed the synergies (i.e., progress in one goal favors progress in another) and trade-offs (progress in one goal hinders progress in another) within and across SDGs. They found that SDG1 “No poverty,” or SDG3 “Good health and Well-being” have synergetic relationships with many goals, while SDG12 “Responsible consumption and production” is associated with trade-offs as it has negative correlations with 10 other goals based on the data pair analysis. Later, Lusseau and Mancini (2019) analyzed how key synergies and trade-offs between SDG goals and targets, based on the World Bank categories data, vary with respect to a country's gross national income (GNI) per capita. They highlighted that SDG10 “Reduce Inequalities,” SDG12 “Responsible Consumption and Production,” and SDG13 “Climate Action” are the most central ones, interacting negatively (according to the negative strength value calculated in their study) with many other SDGs (for example in high-income countries SDG12 and SDG13 are antagonistic, based on the Laplacian graph and the eigenvalue centrality value). These kinds of conflicting relationships between SDGs suggest a need for differentiated policy priorities between countries as they progress toward the 2030 Agenda. Kroll et al. (2019) also analyzed trade-offs and synergies between goals and future trends until 2030 based on the SDG index data. They found positive developments with notable synergies in some goals (i.e., SDGs 1, 3, 7, 8, 9), despite others presenting trade-offs (i.e., SDGs 11, 13). There are also other studies that analyzed these interlinkages from a qualitative perspective ( Singh et al., 2018 ; Fuso Nerini et al., 2019 ; Vinuesa et al., 2020 ). Particularly relevant for this study is that to date, there are no global studies on the interrelations among SDGs related to the research output of Higher Education Institutions to the best of our knowledge, a gap that this study intends to fill.

Development Goals and Their Relationship With Higher Education Institutions and Research Centers

As discussed above, MDGs and SDGs appeared as a result of the interest and commitment of governments of countries from all over the world toward sustainable development. As Caiado et al. (2018) stated, “The SDG agenda calls for a global partnership—at all levels—between all countries and stakeholders who need to work together to achieve the goals and targets, including a broad spectrum of actions such as multinational businesses, local governments, regional and international bodies, and civil societal organizations.” In this regard, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Research Centers (RCs) should play an active and central role in promoting and participating in these new goals.

In the past, HEIs played a role in “transforming societies and serving the greater public good, so there is a societal need for universities to assume responsibility for contributing to sustainable development” ( Waas et al., 2010 ), and HEIs “should be leaders in the search for solutions and alternatives to current environmental problems and agents of change” ( Hesselbarth and Schaltegger, 2014 ). For Bizerril et al. (2018) , the knowledge of sustainability in HEIs should be encouraged worldwide and especially those located in regions with serious social and environmental challenges. In this sense, researchers must discuss how to cooperate and to share knowledge for a sustainable society, and HEIs could respond to sustainability through cooperation. According to Lozano et al. (2015) , HEIs (and in extension, RCs) could tackle sustainable development from the following initiatives: (1) Institutional frameworks (i.e., HEIs commitment with vision, missions, SD office…); (2) Campus operations related to the physical built environment (e.g., energy use and energy efficiency, waste, water and water management); (3) Education (e.g., courses on sustainable development); (4) Research (e.g., research centers, publications, research funding); (5) Outreach and collaboration (e.g., exchange programmes for students in the field of sustainable development); (6) Sustainable development through on-campus experiences; and (7) Assessment and reporting. Despite all these aspects, as Caeiro et al. (2013) study stated, only a few institutions follow a holistic implementation, in which sustainable development is applied in all traditional sustainability dimensions via its inclusion in social, economic, and environmental pillars.

The Role of Scientific Research in the Achievement of SDGs

Scientific research is one of the most relevant dimensions in the effective achievement of SDGs and Agenda 2030. According to Tatalović and Antony (2010) science did not factor strongly in the discussions on how to achieve MDGs goals. However, Leal Filho et al. (2017) see SDGs as an opportunity for scientific research to contribute to the achievement of the goals. For Leal Filho et al. (2018) , development goals are an opportunity to encourage sustainability research through interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. Several authors also support the important role of scientific research to achieve SDGs ( Wuelser and Pohl, 2016 ), namely as a way to solve concrete social problems, while sustainability science 5 could support the transition for sustainability. Yet, to our knowledge, no large-scale study has sought to investigate which SDGs are prioritized in the research by HEIs at a global level. The ambition of this study is precisely to fill this gap by providing a global mapping of research topics related to SDGs, identifying who the main contributing HEIs to this research are.

Scientometric Analyses of SDGs-Related Research Outputs From HEIs

Scientometrics is a research area focused on studying research activities (e.g., production, evolution, collaboration, impact, etc.) in order to understand the scientific dynamics across subject areas, institutions, or countries. Scientometric studies offer a powerful tool to generate global pictures of the research activities in a given area. There are different scientometric studies that previously analyzed sustainability, sustainable development or sustainability science based on a keyword search ( Nučič, 2012 ; Schoolman et al., 2012 ; Hassan et al., 2014 ; Kajikawa et al., 2014 ; Pulgarin et al., 2015 ; Ramírez Ríos et al., 2016 ; Olawumi and Chan, 2018 ). Some studies focused on analyzing the output of sustainability in higher education ( Bizerril et al., 2018 ; Veiga Ávila et al., 2018 ; Alejandro-Cruz et al., 2019 ; Hallinger and Chatpinyakoop, 2019 ). However, few studies have specifically analyzed scientific output on SDGs, probably due to the intrinsic difficulty in determining the contributions of science to SDGs ( Armitage et al., 2020 ).

Despite these difficulties, some studies have already tried to analyze the interrelations among SDGs ( Le Blanc, 2015 ; Griggs et al., 2017 ). Körfgen et al. (2018) analyzed the contribution of Austrian universities toward SDGs. Sweileh (2020) analyzed 18,696 publications from Scopus by searching the term “sustainable development goal.” Another study ( Nakamura et al., 2019 ), analyzed 2,800 publications (with an expansion to 10,300), developed topic maps from the publications identified. One of the authors of this paper had already carried out a preliminary scientometric study ( Bautista-Puig and Mauleón, 2019 ) by analyzing the core of scientific publications on MDGs and SDGs ( n = 4,532) in addition to the interrelations between different SDGs from a scientometric point of view. However, to the best of our knowledge, no previous study has approached a large-scale study of MDGs and SDGs relations from a scientometric point of view, considering the role of Higher Education Institutions and Research Centers in the production of research around MDGs and SDGs.

The development of these types of studies is paramount in order to assess and understand their potential limitations and robustness ( Rafols, 2020 ), particularly given the increasing number that are starting to use keyword-based scientometric queries, and machine learning approaches ( Pukelis et al., 2020 ) in order to map the contribution of research to the understanding of SDGs (e.g., Elsevier, OSDG tool, STRINGS Project, Dimensions, Aurora Project), and even their impact (e.g., Times Higher Education SDG Impact indicators). Thus, it is important that different methods and approaches are considered and discussed, particularly highlighting their advantages and limitations. This study aims at contributing also to this debate, as well as to provide scientometric evidence on the main research patterns around SDGs, that can help foster the debate on the role of universities to the SDGs goal.

The main purpose of this article is to produce a quantitative study of the scientific research on development goals during the period 2000–2017. Our ambition is 2-fold, on the one hand to propose a scientometric method based on citation relations that can be used to identify research conceptually related to MDGs and SDGs (henceforth M&SDGs), and on the other hand to identify and analyze the main institutions involved in the development of M&SDGs-related scientific outputs, as well as to characterize the main underlying topics related to M&SDGs research. The scientometric analysis was guided by three main research questions:

- RQ1: How can M&SDGs research can be scientometrically delineated and collected? This question focuses on applying an advanced citation-based approach to determine what M&SDG-related research is.

- RQ2. How has M&SDGs research carried out by HEIs has developed over time? This question seeks to characterize how the production of research outputs on M&SDGs has evolved over time, with a special focus on its main producers (institutions and countries). The unit of analysis of this study is on HEIs and RCs (hereafter HEIs). For the more specific definition of these terms used in this study, the reader is referred to Supplementary Material .

- RQ3: What are the specific M&SDGs research topics that have been studied by HEIs? This question identifies and characterizes the main research topics studied in the scientific literature produced by HEIs, with a special focus on the interrelations among the 17 SDGs based on the ad-hoc glossary developed by Bautista (2019) .

The rest of the article is organized as follows. The next section includes the methods section. This is followed by the results and discussions, providing answers to the research questions. Finally, the last section presents the main conclusions and suggestions for future research.

An important methodological difficulty with the definition of M&SDGs research is the discrepancy between what is research related to M&SDGs and what is research on M&SDGs . “ Research related to M&SDGs” comprises research that is related to concepts, issues or ideas related to the M&SDGs but without necessarily a direct linkage to the M&SDGs core (e.g., an institution doing research related to malaria prior to the official launch of the SDGs). “ Research on M&SDGs” comprises research directly focusing on the concepts, notions and principles of the M&SDGs (e.g., research directly mentioning “Sustainable Development Goal” or citing a paper that does it). In this work we partly incorporate both perspectives. Thus, we consider that a scientific publication is on the M&SDGs if it mentions either the concepts of MDG or SDGS (i.e., core research), or at a minimum cites, or is cited by, the core research. From a conceptual point of view it can be argued that our approach focuses on identifying research conceptually related to the “discourse of development goals,” and more specifically about how this topic has been constructed in the research by HEIs. With this citation-based approach we are providing a focused analysis on the scientific research that has a stronger cognitive 6 alignment with the M&SDGs philosophy and aims, thus avoiding the limitations of semantic approaches (e.g., based on keywords), in which different selections of keywords and terms are possible (and potentially questionable—see Rafols, 2020 ).

The following methodological steps were followed: (1) Formulation of a search strategy to identify the core M&SDGs literature; (2) Expansion of the dataset based on direct citations (cited and citing publications); (3) Data collection refining and information processing; and (4) Development of scientometric indicators.

(1) Formulation of a search strategy to identify the core M&SDGs literature

In the first step, we designed a search strategy composed by keywords that unambiguously relate to M&SDGs 7 . These keywords were searched in titles, abstracts, and keywords (author and paper keywords 8 ). The search strategy was run using the in-house CWTS WoS database (limited to publications from the years 2000–2017). A total of 4,685 publications were collected, and all publication types indexed in the Web of Science were considered. These are considered as the M&SDGs core set of publications.

(2) Expansion of the dataset based on direct citations (cited and citing publications)

Starting from the M&SDG core set of publications ( n = 4,685), the set of their direct citations (DC), considering both cited ( n = 59,180) and citing ( n = 74,859) publications were collected, 9 resulting in a final set of distinct publications referred to as M&SDGs Expansion ( n = 129,379).

(3) Data collection refining and affiliation information processing

In a following step, a total of 25,299 publications between 2000 and 2017 10 were selected, excluding 104,080 publications from years outside this period. These publications were further characterized, identifying those publications with at least one affiliation from HEIs ( Figure 1 ), thus conforming the final dataset of analysis, with 21,653 publications (85.59%). The harmonization of the affiliations was based in the in-house CWTS database ( Waltman et al., 2012 ).

Figure 1 . Methodological workflow for delineating M&SDGs on this study and creating the final dataset.

(4) Development of scientometric indicators & analytics

The following indicators were analyzed for the final dataset:

(i) Research patterns

- Yearly trend in scientific output in M&SDGs overall and by these institutions. A trend analysis of 6-year blocks is considered.

- Cumulative Average Growth Rate (CAGR) . The formula is the following:

Where X 1 and X n are the values found for the first and last periods studied. The expression is equivalent to the compound average growth rate (CAGR) often used in finance to measure mean growth across a time series.

- Output by institutions and countries : Absolute values and “ Activity Index ” (AI) of their M&SDGs research ( Supplementary Equation 1 ). The AI was proposed by Frame (1977) and it is used to analyze the degree of relative specialization of an actor (institution or country) in a research field. The indicator represents the percentage contribution of each country to the total WoS production, compared to the percentage of contribution in the analyzed topic. ArcGis software was used for creating the maps.

(ii) Subject specialization.

- Co-occurrence map 11 based on keywords using the VOSviewer tool 12 to identify thematic clusters within the scientific landscape. Regarding the clustering, VOSviewer applies its own algorithm based on modularity optimization ( Van Eck and Waltman, 2017 ). Table 1 summarizes the indicators analyzed.

Table 1 . List of indicators analyzed for the co-occurrence maps.

- Keywords “burst citation.” Burst is a concept associated with a change of a variable's value in a relatively short time. Those sudden increases in the usage frequency of keywords (i.e., burst strength) in order to determine the hotness of a topic were identified using Kleinberg's algorithm ( Kleinberg, 2003 ). This value is not normalized, but the ranking order and the duration of the burst are rather relevant for its interpretation.

- Scientific production classification into the SDGs . In order to study the semantic relations between the different SDGs (in terms of SDGs sharing similar keywords across publications), the individual publications were classified in accordance with the different SDGs. To classify the publications into individual SDGS, an ad-hoc ontology ( Bautista, 2019 ) with 4,122 terms has been applied. Publications were classified in different individual SDGs based on the linkage between the keywords in the publications and the ontology, allowing publications to be classified in more than one SDG when their keywords would point to different SDGs. A total of 20,749 (82.01%) publications were finally classified in at least one of the 17 SDGs. This includes keywords related to each SDG based on the United Nations-Description (e.g., “poverty” was classified into “SDG1-No poverty,” “sanitation” into “SDG6- clean water and sanitation”), 13 as well as a manual-supervision of the keywords located as the core and its consequent extension.

In this section the main results of the paper are presented in relationship to the main research questions formulated above.

Research Output and Main Actors

This section analyses the M&SDGs-related research output collected, as well as the main actors producing it and their specialization. Figure 2 presents the evolution of the scientific output of development goals produced. The scientific evolution shows a growing tendency, with an overall growth of 828.65% over the period and a CAGR of 14.01%. Since the launch of the SDGs in 2015, there has been a strong concentration of the M&SDGs research output, with more than 31.6% of the overall output published since the launch of the SDGs in 2015 (until 2017).

Figure 2 . Yearly output of the scientific production of organizations (2000–2017).

A total of 1,968 organizations were identified in the affiliations of these publications. The most productive institution was the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, with 1,963 publications (9.07%), followed by the World Health Organization (WHO), with 1,675 (7.74%), Johns Hopkins University with 1,324 (6.11%) and Harvard University with 1,079 (4.98%). However, when looking at the 6-year blocs as in Supplementary Table 1 , different tendencies are shown over time. In the first 6-year (2000–2005) sample, the number of publications was 2,330 produced by 660 organizations identified. The most productive organizations in this period were the WHO, with 292 publications (12.53%), followed by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine with 272 (11.67%) and the Johns Hopkins University with 157 (6.74%). In the second period (2006–2011), a total of 6,671 publications were produced by 1,244 organizations. During this period, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine led the ranking with 682 publications (10.22%), followed by the WHO with 580 (8.69%) and the Johns Hopkins University with 439 (6.58%). In the third period (2012–2017), a total of 12,652 publications, produced by 1,744 organizations, were identified. The same ranking of organizations as in the previous period is also found: The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine leads with 1,009 publications (7.98%), followed by the WHO with 803 publications (6.35%) and the Johns Hopkins University with 728 (5.75%). Among the more productive HEIs there are only five institutions from developing countries: two form South Africa (the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand), one from Uganda (Makerere University), one from Pakistan (Aga Khan University), and one from Brazil (the Federal University of Pelotas).

Figure 3 shows a scatter plot of the relation between the institutions with a higher scientific production on SDGs [P(M&SDGs)] and their AI around research on this topic [AI(M&SDG)]. The size of the bubbles indicates the number of publications in WoS of each institution (only institutions with more than 50 are included in the Figure). Overall, the most productive institutions present a lower AI (e.g., the Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University with P(M&SDG) = 1,324 publications and P(M&SDG) = 1,024, respectively, have an AI of 8.70 and 3.89, respectively). The WHO [P(M&SDG) = 1,675] and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine [P(M&SDG)= 1,963] present a high AI of more than 88% each. Among the institutions with the larges AI values we find other institutions such as the Stockholm Environment Institute (AI 190.47), Aga Khan University (AI 141.06), or the International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (AI 132.55) ( Figure 3 ).

Figure 3 . Scatter plot of the Top 20 organizations ranked by AI (with more than 50 docs.).

A map is drawn in order to show the geographical distribution of M&SDGs publications ( Figure 4 ). The most productive countries during the whole period were the United States (8,473 publications, 39.13%), followed by the United Kingdom (6,053 publications, 27.95%), Switzerland (2,232 publications, 10.31%), Australia (1,959 publications, 9.05%), and Canada (1,757 publications, 8.11%). By periods, in the first one (2000–2005) a total of 67 countries produced at least one publication on M&SDGs research increasing to 86 countries in the second period, and to 95 countries in the third period, with the same set of countries mentioned above as the most productive in each period ( Figure 4 ). From the point of view of the specialization (measured by the AI), African and Asian countries exhibit a stronger specialization in M&SDGs research compared to countries from other regions. Uganda is leading the specialization in the whole period (29 publications and AI of 24% in the first period: 107 and AI 32.60 in the second period and 265 publications and AI of 43.130 in the third period). Supplementary Table 2 provides information on 6-year blocs to see differences over time. Apart from Uganda, other African countries (Tanzania, South-Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Rwanda, Mozambique, or Ethiopia) stand out in specialization. Besides, other countries from Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan), or Europe (Switzerland) present a higher AI on the topic.

Figure 4 . Geographic distribution of scientific publications and AI (countries with >20 publications).

Keyword Co-occurrence Analysis

To reveal the main topics of the M&SDGs research, Figure 5 shows a keyword co-occurrence-based clustering. The parameters for creating the maps are detailed below: LingLog Modularity normalization method, 566 items; link of 65,446; link strength of 298,485; and repulsion, resolution and minimum cluster size with a value of 1 14 . Keywords (nodes) in VOSViewer maps are located in such a way that the distance between them is related to their co-occurrence frequency. Terms located closely in the map means that they tend to appear together in the titles and abstracts of the papers, and therefore it can be argued that they are thematically connected. The following five clusters were identified: Cluster #1, with terms related to the millennium development goals inheritance and policy framework; Cluster #2 with terms about maternal mortality and care; Cluster #3 with terms related to the health systems (“diagnosis,” “treatment”); Cluster #4 with terms about the African health ecosystem, and Cluster #5 including terms related to the developing countries' landscape (health, community, water, and so on). Table 2 summarizes the main information of each cluster (number of nodes, core papers, average year, average links, and the most frequent keywords). It can be observed that cluster 1 is the largest in terms of publications, followed by cluster 2. The number of links per paper (#link avg ) is higher in cluster #2 and cluster #3, both related to health issues, suggesting a stronger connection between these two clusters. In most clusters, the average year (#year avg ) is 2012, suggesting that an important share of the output has been developed in the most recent years of study, which is backed up by the growing M&SDGs output over time discussed above. The percentage of core publications (i.e., directly referring to M&SDGs) for each cluster is indicated in the column “% core papers,” showing that clusters #1 and #2 (with 45.40 and 37.55% of core publications, respectively), are clusters with a stronger conceptual proximity with the M&SDGs core ideas and aims, while the other clusters have a more indirect relationship with these core ideas.

Figure 5 . Co-occurrence map (frequency of, at least, 50 keywords) of scientific research.

Table 2 . Summary of five thematic clusters.

Keyword Burst Analysis

In this section, burst detection for keywords in M&SDGs publications is performed in order to show what terms have more rapidly increased attention in citations accumulation. We have identified at least 60 different bursting keywords during the period. Supplementary Table 3 lists the 60 keywords with the strongest citation bursts, along with their strength and time span. The term “middle income country” has the strongest citation burst with a burst strength of 75.13, followed by “tuberculosis” with 66.52 and “maternal health” with 64.98. Some keywords have only been “bursting” at the very beginning of the period (e.g., “low birth weight,” 2000–2003; “economic growth,” 2000–2001; and “rural Bangladesh,” 2000–2001). However, in more recent years, strongly bursting citation keywords include “new-born” (16.65, time span of 2015–2017), “middle income country” (75.13, 2014–2017), “maternal health” (64.98, 2014–2017), and “delivery” (36.38, 2014–2017).

Individual SDGs Analysis

Publication prevalence.

The following SDGs were most prevalently represented in the publications ( Supplementary Figure 1 ): SDG3 “Good Health and well-being,” with 15,963 papers (76.93%); followed by SDG16 “Peace, justice and strong institutions,” with 11,658 (56.19%); SDG11 “Sustainable cities and communities,” with 9,541 publications (45.98%); and SDG10: “Reduce inequalities,” with 6,115 publications (29.47%). On the other hand, the least represented SDGs are: SDG 12 “Responsible production and consumption,” 939 papers (4.51%); and SDG7 “Affordable and clean energy,” with 1,095 (5.26%).

Geographic Distribution

Figure 6 shows two different perspectives on the production of publications across continents related to their contribution to the research of each individual SDG. In Figure 6A , the contribution of each continent to each SDGs is presented (reading row-wise); while the table on the right depicts the share of each continent across the different individual SDGs (reading column-wise). Publications are assigned to each continent based on the affiliation of the first-author of the paper. The results of the left table show that all goals have higher production in Europe and North America. Considering all M&SDGs research, it can be observed that in Europe the largest percentage of output is in SDG13 “Climate action” (46.23%), followed by SDG12 “Responsible Production” (44.85%) and SDG15 “Life on Land” (44.28%). In America, the largest is SDG2 “Zero Hunger” (37.60%), followed by SDG5 “Gender Equality” (15.50%), and SDG3 “Good Health” (13.32%). In Africa, the highest production is in SDG5 “Gender Equality” (15.50%); SDG4 “Quality Education” (14.27%); and SDG11 “Sustainable cities” (13.73%). In Asia, the greatest output is in SDG17 “Partnership for the goals:” (13.97%); SDG4 “Quality Education:” (13.33%); and SDG5 “Gender Equality” (13.31%). Finally, in Oceania, the higher production of these institutions is in SDG13 “Climate Action” (8.47%); SDG12 “Responsible Production and consumption” (7.24%); and SDG15 “Life on Land” (6.81%). From a global perspective, if we consider the distribution of the publications on each goal by continent to determine their profile ( Figure 6B ), the approach of the different SDGs exhibit more similar patterns, although some SDGs—such as SDG3 “Good Health,” SDG16 “Peace, Justice,” and SDG10 “Reducing Inequalities”—stand out from the others.

Figure 6 . Contribution of each continent to each SDGs (A) and profile by continent (B) .

Cognitive Relationships

Although the interlinked nature of SDGs has been stressed, their interactions are “not explicit in the description of the goals” ( Griggs et al., 2017 ). For instance, SDG11 “Sustainable Cities,” contains targets related to economic dimensions (e.g., financial and technical assistance for developed countries, expenditure on the conservation of cultural and natural heritage), social dimensions (e.g., number of deaths per disaster and urban population living in slums), or environmental dimensions (e.g., reducing the adverse environmental impact of cities per capita, or the proportion of urban solid waste), and these three could be conceptually linked to other SDGs, for example SDG6 “Clean Water.” In our study, to reveal their cognitive relations (measured via citations), a co-citation map has been created. The proximity between SDGs indicates their similarity in terms of co-citation occurrence (i.e., publications from the two SDGs appear often cited together in the same set of publications). The size of the nodes reflects the frequency of SDGs in terms of overall publications, and the thickness of the edges denotes how often these SDGs are co-cited. Figure 7A shows the SDGs map of the M&SDGs research. The following clusters of SDGs are identified:

Figure 7 . Co-citation occurrence map of (A) M&SDGs research, and (B) average publication year.

Cluster 1 (red) is formed by SDGs with a strong industrial and energy orientation [SDG6 ‘Clean Water’, SDG7 ‘Clean Energy’, and SDG9 ‘Industry, Innovation’] and the environment (SDG15 ‘Life on Land’, and SDG14 ‘Life below Water’). Cluster 2 (blue) groups; SDG1 “No Poverty,” and SDG2 “Zero Hunger,” being two of the most important SDGs inheritance of MDGs. SDG1 is directly and indirectly related to all other SDGs, but dependent on SDG2 International Council for Science, 2015 ].

Cluster 3 (yellow) includes SDG10 “Reduced Inequalities,” and SDG17 “Partnership for the Goals,” linking the reduction of inequalities and partnership.

Cluster 4 (green) is composed by SDGs related with health, urbanization and peace: SDG3; “Good health;” SDG4 “Quality Education;” SDG 5 “Gender Equality;” SDG11 “Sustainable Cities;” and SDG16 “Peace, Justice.” For instance, SDG11 “Sustainable Cities” and SDG3 “Good Health” have a strong connection (link strength of 5,154).

Cluster 5 (purple) is composed only by SDG8 “Decent work.” However, this goal has links with SDG9 “Industry, Innovation” and SDG11 “Sustainable Cities,” or SDG3 “Good Health,” among others.

Figure 7B depicts the evolution of the SDG in each cluster from the average publication year (2011–2012). The more yellow indicates the more recent the publications. It can be observed how SDG3 “Good Health,” SDG8 “Decent Work,” SDG16 “Peace, Justice”, and SDG11 “Sustainable Cities” have had research output from earlier years, as compared to the other SDGs. From another perspective, SDGs with a stronger recentness in scientific output include SDG17 “Partnership for the Goals,” SDG10 “Reduced Inequalities,” SDG5 “Gender Equality,” and SDG4 “Quality Education,” indicate that awareness of areas related to education or gender are of a more recent nature.

The proposal of the different SDGs in 2005 together with Agenda 2030 has led to the creation of a path of collective national and international awareness toward sustainability. One of the main features of SDGs is their increasing relevance not only for policy makers, who are encouraging sustainability-oriented policies, but also for the scientific community as a whole ( Kajikawa et al., 2007 ; Sweileh, 2020 ). This study presents an empirical scientometric analysis of M&SDGs research, and the role of HEIs in its development. As stated in the literature review, few studies have focused on analyzing the research output of SDGs, and even fewer have focused on the role of the organizations developing such research. Thus, this paper contributes to the debate around the incorporation of the M&SDGs in the research agenda of HEIs by providing an overview of output in the area, and by proposing a practical methodology approach to delineate this area in bibliometric databases.

How Can M&SDGs-Research Be Scientometrically Delineated and Collected?

A well-delineated methodology is crucial to identify the research publications on a specific topic. In this study, we propose a citation-based methodology to track and monitor M&SDGs-related research. The application of our methodology retrieved a total of 25,299 publications, which identifies a much larger set of publications of M&SDGs at HEIs than in similar previous studies ( Bizerril et al., 2018 ; Veiga Ávila et al., 2018 ; Hallinger and Chatpinyakoop, 2019 ). The study by Nakamura et al. (2019) used a very similar methodology as the one presented here, however we identified a larger set of publications related to M&SDGs (4,685 in the core and 25,299 in total in the present study vs. the 2,800 in the core and 10,300 total in Nakamura study). The main reason for this difference is that in the present study the MDGs were also considered, as well as the fact that the CWTS WoS version has a more efficient citation matching algorithm than the one in WoS ( Olensky et al., 2016 ). The citation-based approach of this study, as well as in Nakamura et al. (2019) , offers some advantages in comparison with previous studies that applied keyword-based approaches ( Kajikawa et al., 2007 ; Elsevier Research Intelligence, 2015 ). For instance, it offers a systematic approach that can easily be reproduced and can be applied to any other database that records citation linkages among publications (e.g., Web of Science, Scopus, Microsoft Academic Graph, Dimensions, Crossref Open Citations, etc.), making possible the replication of this approach in future studies. Another important advantage of our approach is that it focuses on identifying publications that are cognitively related to M&SDGs, since the selected publications have cited/are citing relationships with the core literature on M&SDGs, thus avoiding the problem of delineating M&SDGs-related research using keywords. Keyword-based approaches would typically identify as SDGs-related research publications that only have a circumstantial relationships with SDGs, but that are not totally related to them (e.g., publications related to “economic growth,” but not in the philosophy underlying the M&SDGs—i.e., sustainable economic growth). Finally, the method developed here has the advantage that it captures the M&SDGs research output at the global level, thus providing an international perspective on the discussion around the study of the research activity on M&SDGs. However, in future studies other more local perspectives (e.g., the study of publications in local languages, local publishers) should be also explored.

How Has M&SDGs Research Carried Out by HEIs Developed Over Time?

The results presented in this study suggest that although one may presume that M&SDGs research would have a long tradition since the launch of the MDGs, there is an important concentration of publications in the most recent years, denoting a more recent interest in the SDGs (21.83% in 2000–2014, the MDGs period vs. 31.66% from 2015 to 2017 since the launch of the SDGs). However, we should take into consideration that by using WoS there is a strong bias toward English-language journals and might have distorted the results. In any case, this recency trend in the production of M&SDGs-related research is in line with the results obtained by Olawumi and Chan (2018) who observed that the scientific output on sustainable development, 2015–2016, represents 36.27% (vs. 21.42% on M&SDGs in the present study). There have also been previous publications discussing the growth of the scientific production related with sustainability. For example, Pulgarin et al. (2015) argued that the growth of research production in sustainability can be explained by “the impact of human activity on the environment” which “is leading to this area of research [sustainability] being studied from ever more different fields.” Olawumi and Chan (2018) consider that this increase could be also linked to “more efforts and resources” being devoted to this topic. For Nučič (2012) , the increasing growth of the scientific output could be associated with “sustainability science as a highly interdisciplinary research field.” This is in line with Schoolman et al. (2012) , who indicated that “sustainability research is more interdisciplinary than other scientific research” (based on the Shannon entropy measure), supporting the suggestion by Nakamura et al. (2019) that SDGs research is based on “transdisciplinary knowledge” between different fields, arguing that “most scientific disciplines are expected to contribute toward sustainability since in sustainability we have complex structures, including environmental, technological, societal, and economic facets” ( Kajikawa et al., 2014 ).

In previous studies on M&SDGs the role of these institutions has not been specifically analyzed (e.g., in Nakamura et al., 2019 ). Institutions like the London School of Hygiene, the WHO, and the Johns Hopkins University stand out among the most productive institutions. Their predominant role can be explained by their relatively large sizes; however, their AI confirms that these institutions are also highly specialized on this topic too. The London School of Hygiene belongs to the University of London and is specialized in public health and tropical medicine; while the WHO is a specialized agency of the United Nations focused on international public health. As well, London School of Hygiene have focused recently on health systems' strengthening (HSS) ( Seidman, 2017 ). The predominant role in output and specialization of the WHO, which is not a HEI or a RC but a supra-governmental organization that provides statistics for monitoring health-related aspects of the SDGs, 15 may be also seen as a sign of the strong social and political relevance of M&SDGs research.

Some other organizations that, although smaller in terms of output, have a high degree of specialization are the Stockholm Environment Institute (AI 191.47), the Aga Khan University (AI 141.06), or the International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (AI 132.55). This relative importance of small organizations goes in line with Nakamura's et al. (2019) results, who suggested that not always the largest institutions “set the agenda” in M&SDGs research, but that smaller ones also could be key players (e.g., Stockholm Environment Institute, and the University of London).

This study confirms the observation by Yarime et al. (2010) of an increasing number of countries engaged in research on sustainability. Our results also resonate with studies like that of Adomßent et al. (2014) , who also stated that the HEIs' sustainability research is mostly produced by authors from developed countries such as the USA, the United Kingdom, Australia, or Canada. However, in terms of relative specialization, our study shows that African and Asian countries exhibit a much stronger specialization. A special case is South Africa. This country is the sixth country in number of M&SDGs publications, and one of its universities (i.e., University of Cape Town) is the most prolific African institution in M&SDGs research. This strong relevance of SDGs research in South African can be reinforced by the fact that “South Africa” is a topic in the M&SDGs research map since the name of the country appears as a node in the term co-occurrence map. Although our scientometric evidence is not strong enough to conclude that the higher performance of this country in M&SDGs is the direct effect of policies aimed at encouraging research on M&SDGs, it must be highlighted that the country counts with South Africa's National Development Plan (NDP), which defines national development priorities and provides the foundations for South Africa in order to achieve the SDGs ( Cumming et al., 2017 ).

What Are the Specific M&SDGs Research Topics That Have Been Studied by HEIs?

The SDGs more frequently addressed by HEIs are SDG3 “Good Health” (76.93% of the publications), SDG16 “Peace, Justice” (56.19%), SDG11 “Sustainable Cities” (45.98%) and SDG10 “Reduced inequalities” (29.47%), which is in line with the higher percentage of overall HEIs involved on this research ( Supplementary Table 4 ). Our results contrast with the results obtained by Salvia et al. (2019) , who surveyed research experts in SDGs across continents, highlighting the following SDGs as having more activity: SDG 13 “Climate Action” (41%), SDG 11 “Sustainable Cities” (33%), and SDG 4 “Quality Education” (29%). This remarkable difference between a qualitative approach (i.e., surveys sent to experts in Salvia et al., 2019 ) and our quantitative approach, reinforces the importance of considering and combining different methodologies in the study of how science is contributing to the achievement of SDGs, and how academic stakeholders are approaching the different SDGs.

Regarding the interconnection of SDGs, according to Nilsson et al. (2016) , SDGs are more interconnected among themselves than its predecessors, the MDGs. This idea of SDGs interconnecting among themselves is supported by their consideration as “enablers for integration,” which means that the internal structures of the different SDGs is conceived to fit across more different SDGs ( Le Blanc, 2015 ), thus enabling their own integration and interconnection. This integrative and interconnected property of SDGs is observed in this study, since all goals have connections among them, being particularly remarkable the connections between the following three pairs, which presented a higher co-occurrence values: SDG16 “Peace, Justice” vs. SDG13 “Climate Action;” SDG3 “Good Health” vs. SDG11 “Sustainable Cities;” and SDG16 “Peace, Justice” vs. SDG11 “Sustainable Cities.” Moreover, the linkage between the pairs responds to complementary relationships. For instance, SDG3 “Good Health” and SDG11 “Sustainable Cities,” linking health with cities could be understood as housing, transport, and access to green spaces are major determinants of health and well-being ( International Council for Science, 2015 ).

As mentioned above, SDG3 “Good Health” is the most researched SDG identified in our study. This is not a surprise since this goal has a central role in the achievement of sustainable development ( Pettigrew et al., 2015 ), and Biomedical Research is one of the largest research areas covered in Web of Science ( Mongeon and Paul-Hus, 2016 ). In any case, our results are in agreement with ( Körfgen et al., 2018 ; Sweileh, 2020 ), and as pointed out by previous studies, SDG3 “Good Health” was found to have a higher share of synergies with other SDGs in most countries ( Pradhan et al., 2017 ). The MDGs, experience has shown that without improvements in health systems performance, progress on the goals was both limited and potentially unsustainable ( Seidman, 2017 ). This may explain why this specific health-related goal (SDG3) became more ambitious and central than in the MDGs ( Seidman, 2017 ; Asi and Williams, 2018 ). It is important to highlight that one the major efforts of SDG3 has been to reduce mortality across population groups (e.g., “the poor” or “women and children”) ( Buse and Hawkes, 2015 ), thus explaining the central role of “good health” in the map of topics presented in this study. However, from our data, there is no empirical evidence suggesting why health is the goal most researched.

Conclusions

Based on an advanced citation-based field delineation, this paper provides an extensive analysis of M&SDGs research over time and contributes to contextualize and understand its trajectory. The results of this study are relevant for planners and decision-makers in HEIs. First, this paper presents a new delineation procedure for M&SDGs-related research. The methodology is simple and reproducible, allowing its application in future studies for researchers, as well as its implementation in other citation databases (e.g., Scopus, Dimensions, Microsoft Academic Graph, etc.). Second, our work contributes to the expansion of the toolset of research instruments aimed at evaluating the development of research around M&SDGs. We provide a relevant proof of concept on how scientometric methodologies can support the monitoring of the research developed to support the achievement of M&SDGs. The approach proposed in this paper has relevance for all stakeholders engaged in the development of research activities related to M&SDGs (e.g., HEIs, RCs, governmental and supranational organizations, NGOs, and any stakeholder interested in SDGs). Developing reproducible methodologies (as done in this paper) and establishing a stable analytical monitoring framework is fundamental for a proper understanding of how science is contributing to the achievement of SDGs. However, it is important, not only to analyze the number of papers, but also the contribution itself of those papers with the goals, targets, and indicators.

From a scientometric point of view, this study provides a novel contribution to the scientometric analysis on SDGs research output, particularly since most scientometric studies have focused on developing semantic approaches, in which the use of keywords has been the most common approximation to the topic ( Pukelis et al., 2020 ; Rafols, 2020 ). We adopt a citation-based approach. This approach does not suffer from the ambiguity of semantic approaches (e.g., synonymy, homonymy), and more fundamentally, our approach does not hold the limitation that keyword-based approaches may capture research that is not necessarily aligned with the principles and philosophical foundations of M&SDGs. Grounded on the idea that citations represent concept symbols ( Small, 1978 ), in which scientific authors associate ideas by creating symbolic acts with their citations (see also Haustein et al., 2016 ), it can be argued that our approach captures the body of scientific literature most conceptually related with M&SDGs. To the best of our knowledge, only the Nakamura et al. (2019) study and this one have adopted such a citation-based approach, with this study being the most comprehensive to-date in the body of literature analyzed.

It is important however to remark that our citation-based approach still presents some limitations that must be observed when generalizing its findings. By considering only the Web of Science (WoS) database the study may have limitations due to the underrepresentation of other related published works, which may be indexed in other scientometric databases (e.g., Scopus, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic…). Also, WoS does not cover all academic fields equally as it presents an underrepresentation of non-English speaking studies. The methodology proposed may not necessarily capture the whole picture of research related to M&SDGs. The sole use of direct citations related to a core set of publications may also be insufficient at times, since many publications genuinely linked to M&SDGs research may be more distanced in their citation relationship with the core set. In addition, despite all types of publications from WoS being included, some other typologies of interest (e.g., governmental reports) are not captured.

Considering the methodological limitations described above, future methodological improvements should take into account the possibility of characterizing not only the directly cited/citing publications of M&SDGs, but also other citation layers (e.g., 2nd, 3 rd , or more—also known as citation cascades — Min et al., 2020 ) in the expansion of the core set of publications. The use of citation cascades would allow the introduction of a more fluid approach (in which a much larger set of scientific publications may be considered regarding their citation proximity to the core set), in contrast with the binary approach (i.e., publication are M&SDGs-related or not) used in this study. Moreover, since this is the first study that has approached the scientific output from MDGs and SDGs together, we cannot assess whether other scientometric approaches or delineations would have delivered other results, therefore this is an aspect to be considered in future studies. Moreover, future studies on the topic might be complemented by means of qualitative research methods to uncover more specific motivations and drivers for research on SDGs in different contexts. The combination of scientometric indicators with other monitoring indicators (e.g., the SDG index) should also be considered. Such combination of methods will enable more advanced insights on the relationship between the research production of countries (as done in this study) and their success in their actual achievement of the specific SDGs, thus providing a more holistic perspective on how research can complement and support the consecution of Agenda 2030.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets presented in this study can be found in online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession number(s) can be found at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.11106113.v1 .

Author Contributions

NB-P: conceptualization, data curation, software, visualization, formal analysis, and writing- original draft preparation. AA: investigation, and writing—review and editing. SL and UA: writing—review and editing. RC: conceptualization, investigation, methodology, resources, software, validation, supervision, and writing—review and editing. All authors: contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This work was partly supported by the Department of Science and Innovation and the National Research Foundation of South Africa.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsus.2021.620743/full#supplementary-material

1. ^ Sustainable development was defined as a “kind of development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” ( United Nations, 1987 ).

2. ^ Information on the MDGs available at the following link: https://www.who.int/topics/millennium_development_goals/about/en/ (accessed December 30, 2019).

3. ^ SDG Index available at: http://sdgindex.org/ (accessed December 30, 2019).

4. ^ There was no public consultation, as with the SDGs.

5. ^ Sustainability science is a new scientific field that investigates “complex and dynamic interactions between natural and human systems and aims “to bridge the gap between science and society and limit its knowledge to actions for sustainability” ( Disterheft et al., 2013 ).

6. ^ From a theoretical point of view, we build on the notion of citations as “concept symbols” ( Small, 1978 ) in which any publication cited by or citing M&SDGs core publications can considered to have a cognitive association with M&SDGs research.

7. ^ The search strategy was composed of the following parameters: TS = “Millennium Development Goal * ” OR TS = “Millennium Goal * ” OR TS = “Sustainable Development Goal * ”.

8. ^ Web of Science divides between author keywords (included in records of articles and determined by the authors) and keywords plus or “paper authors” (index terms automatically generated from the titles of cited articles).

9. ^ The approach used in this study (identification of a seed of papers, and expansion based on citation relationships) has been used in previous studies (see Reijnhoudt et al., 2014 ).

10. ^ The period corresponds with the launch of the MDGs in 2000.

11. ^ Co-citation is defined as the frequency with which two publications are cited together by other publications.

12. ^ VOSviewer is a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks. These networks may include nodes of journals, researchers, or individual publications, and they can be constructed based on citation, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, or co-authorship relations. Additionally, it offers text mining functionality that can be used to construct and visualize co-occurrence networks of terms extracted from a research dataset ( https://www.vosviewer.com/ —accessed December 30, 2019).

13. ^ Information available at: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ (accessed December 30, 2019).

14. ^ For more clarification of these values the author is referred to the VOSViewer Manual https://www.vosviewer.com/documentation/Manual_VOSviewer_1.6.8.pdf .

15. ^ Information available at: https://www.who.int/sdg/en/ .

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Keywords: sustainable development goals, millennium development goals, higher education institutions, sustainability science, bibliometrics, scientometrics

Citation: Bautista-Puig N, Aleixo AM, Leal S, Azeiteiro U and Costas R (2021) Unveiling the Research Landscape of Sustainable Development Goals and Their Inclusion in Higher Education Institutions and Research Centers: Major Trends in 2000–2017. Front. Sustain. 2:620743. doi: 10.3389/frsus.2021.620743

Received: 23 October 2020; Accepted: 01 March 2021; Published: 25 March 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Bautista-Puig, Aleixo, Leal, Azeiteiro and Costas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Núria Bautista-Puig, nuria.bautista.puig@hig.se

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Climate change mitigation and Sustainable Development Goals: Evidence and research gaps

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Global Centre for Environment and Energy, Ahmedabad University, Ahmedabad, India

Roles Visualization, Writing – review & editing

Roles Methodology, Resources, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Climate Economics and Risk Management, Department of Technology, Management and Economics, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

• Minal Pathak, 
• Shaurya Patel, 
• Shreya Some

Published: March 4, 2024

• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000366
• Reader Comments

Citation: Pathak M, Patel S, Some S (2024) Climate change mitigation and Sustainable Development Goals: Evidence and research gaps. PLOS Clim 3(3): e0000366. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000366

Editor: Jamie Males, PLOS Climate, UNITED KINGDOM

Copyright: © 2024 Pathak et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Never in the past three decades have the interlinkages between sustainable development and climate change been more pressing. The projected date when the remaining carbon budget will be exhausted if continuing at the current rate of emissions [ 1 ] is estimated to be around 2030- which also coincides with the timeline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Recent global assessments clearly show the collective global performance on the targets relating to climate change, biodiversity and SDGs is abysmally poor [ 2 , 3 ]. Urgent efforts are needed to achieve both deep and rapid emissions reductions and to meet the SDGs to set the world on a pathway towards sustainable development.

The appreciation of interconnections between climate change and equity and sustainable development is not recent. In 1992, Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was restructured with a mandate to assess cross-cutting economic and other issues related to climate change including placing socio-economic perspectives in the context of sustainable development. IPCC’s Second Assessment Report in 1995 explicitly highlighted the different starting points of countries, trade-offs between economic growth and sustainability, distributional impacts of mitigation and adaptation actions and issues of intertemporal equity. This understanding has further deepened since then. Successive IPCC reports have highlighted the implications of efforts aimed at achieving targets under Climate Action (SDG 13) on SDGs [ 2 , 4 , 5 ]. There is now more evidence to show synergies of several climate actions with SDGs outweigh the trade-offs [ 6 ] Such actions include active transport, passive building design, clean energy, circular economy and urban green and blue infrastructure ( Fig 1 ) [ 7 ].

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000366.g001

A quick literature search on Scopus for papers focusing on climate change mitigation and SDGs showed 433 papers (Scopus search using search strings for each individual SDGs, for example: (TITLE-ABS-KEY ("SDG 1" OR "SDG1") AND TITLE-ABS-KEY ("Climate") AND TITLE-ABS-KEY ("mitigation" OR "mitigate"))). SDG 7 (Affordable and clean energy), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and 15 (Life on Land) were the most studied while SDGs 4 (Quality Education), 5 (Gender Equality), 10 (Reduced inequality) and 16 (Peace, Justice and strong institutions) received less attention.

Despite numerous studies, there’s limited evidence of the SDGs being perceived as a valuable tool for making decisions regarding climate action. Firstly, many of the existing studies highlight the potential of mitigation actions supporting SDG achievement through theoretical or modelled methods with few empirical studies demonstrating ex-post evaluation of specific interventions. In particular, there is limited literature on trade-offs and understanding of distributional effects for specific groups [ 8 ]. Secondly, a study on mapping SDG interactions of mitigation actions would not necessarily reveal the full picture. For example, urban public transport could show potential synergies with multiple SDGs however, it wouldn’t necessarily provide evidence on whether benefits could accrue to the most vulnerable groups. Similarly, a new urban transit system could have potential synergies with SDGs 3, 6, 9 and 11, however, this would fail to capture the near-term trade-offs e.g. relocation or costs or emissions.

It becomes more challenging when a particular action can result in mixed impacts, presenting both synergies and trade-offs across indicators within the same SDG. For example, while renewable energy can create green employment opportunities (synergy SDG 8 Target 8.5), it remains uncertain whether these jobs will ensure a safe and secure working environment for all workers throughout the supply chain (trade-off SDG 8, target 8.8). Mitigation options often work across sectors and systems and such interactions are not yet fully dealt with in existing studies.

Additionally, there are gaps in studies and available data for various crucial indicators worldwide, [ 6 ] which complicates the comprehensive assessment of comparing these key indicators across different countries, projects or entities. For instance, the Sustainable Development Report 2023 (Includes time-series data for 122 SDG indicators (out of 169 indicators) for 193 UN member states.) which measures progress across indicators for UN member states compiles data for 3 indicators to construct the index for SDG 13—all of which are related to emissions. Adaptation-related indicators are missing. Finally, studies do not cover temporal and spatial dimensions or the status of these interactions for alternate warming scenarios.

What does this mean for the scientific community?

Addressing the gaps identified presents an opportunity to enhance our understanding of progress towards SDGs and reduce missed opportunities [ 9 , 10 ]. Action that takes into account co-impacts can increase efficiency, reduce costs and support early and ambitious climate action, particularly in developing countries where there are simultaneous development priorities [ 11 ].

A business-as-usual approach to understanding mitigation SDG interactions has made progress but this is not enough. Data, indicators and methodologies, resources, the huge scope of SDGs, limitations of capturing non-measurable development dimensions and capacity constraints remain major challenges for in-depth research in this area [ 12 , 13 ]. New research therefore must focus on the SDGs and targets that have received limited attention and find ways to generate and report data ensuring access and transparency. Where specific data is not available, alternative approaches are needed for e.g. establishing reliable assumptions for utilizing proxy data through expert engagement. Developing indices specific to each goal and setting up reporting guidelines is essential for comparing progress. Failure to report the complete set of indicators limits comparability across goals and targets, and risks missing key priority areas.

Future research needs to focus on comprehensive assessments. For example, demonstrating how, where and to what speed and scale the implementation of a particular intervention resulted in synergies or trade-offs and whether these impacts are sustained. Similarly, going beyond acknowledging trade-offs towards a deeper understanding of what the trade-offs are, for which groups and whether and how these were resolved particularly in relation to questions around power and politics. In-depth studies require both time and resources. Funding needs to be directed to interdisciplinary research as well as building capacity of researchers to undertake such assessments. Quantitative studies involving new tools or modeling exercises, if complemented by qualitative approaches, can deliver more useful insights on synergies and trade-offs, particularly in situations where data is limited. Research institutions and universities can contribute by creating standardized templates and guidelines, as well as consistently reporting data using these templates.

Climate change mitigation research relies significantly on Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) to provide a comprehensive perspective on the interactions between socio-economic systems and earth systems. Existing models do not fully capture all development dimensions [ 14 ] or climate change adaptation though efforts are underway. Future research can focus on developing SD/G-compatible scenario storylines that prioritize development. More work is needed on variables and assumptions to better incorporate equity and justice issues [ 15 ] Modeling teams need to work closely with experts on various aspects of adaptation and sustainable development, including poverty, urbanisation, human well-being and biodiversity.

In conclusion, research frameworks and practices to assess mitigation SDG interactions are inadequate in their present form. Given the urgency, researchers and funders need to move away from business-as-usual approaches towards more in-depth assessments that significantly advance knowledge.

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• 3. Sachs JD, Lafortune G, Fuller G, Drumm E. Sustainable Development Report 2023: Implementing the SDG Stimulus. Dublin University Press; 2023 pp. 1–546.
• 4. IPCC. Global Warming of 1.5°C: IPCC Special Report on Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5°C above Pre-industrial Levels in Context of Strengthening Response to Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty. 1st ed. Cambridge University Press; 2018.
• 5. IPCC. Climate Change 2022—Mitigation of Climate Change: Working Group III Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 1st ed. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press; 2022.
• 6. United Nations Synergy Solutions for a World in Crisis: Tackling Climate and SDG Action Together. Report on Stregnthening the Evidence Base. USA: United Nations; 2023 pp. 1–100. https://www.saoicmai.in/elibrary/first-global-report-on-climate-and-sdg-synergies.pdf
• 9. Dubash N, Mitchell C, Boasson EL, Borbor-Cordova MJ, Fifita S, Haites E, et al. National and Sub-national Policies and Institutions. 1st ed. In: Shukla P, Skea J, Slade R, Al Khourdajie A, van Diemen R, McCollum D, et al., editors. Climate Change 2022—Mitigation of Climate Change. 1st ed. Cambridge University Press; 2022. pp. 1355–1450.
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Green economy performance and sustainable development achievement: empirical evidence from Saudi Arabia

Nahla chaaben.

1 Management Information Systems Department, University of Ha’il, Community College, PO Box 2440, Hail City, Saudi Arabia

Zied Elleuch

2 Computer Science Department, University of Ha’il, Community College, PO Box 2440, Hail City, Saudi Arabia

Basma Hamdi

Bassem kahouli.

3 Higher Institute of Finance and Taxation, University of Sousse, Sousse, Tunisia

Associated Data

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

As a pillar of United Nations, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia pursues to greener its economy and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda. The green economy represents a catalyzer for sustainable development in its three dimensions -economic, social and environmental- aiming to improve human well-being and social equity and reduce environmental risks. However, the relevant previous studies lacked the role of green economy on sustainable development for the Saudi Arabia. For this purpose, this paper aims to explore how green is the kingdom and analyze its performance toward sustainable development from 2015 to 2020. To do so, we adopt the EEPSE Green Economy Index that combines educational, economic, political, societal and environmental indicators associated with the pillars of the Quintuple Helix Innovation Model. In this study, this index is composed of 42 indicators related to the green economy and the sustainable development. The empirical results suggest that the Saudi Arabia witnessed a significant progress of EEPSE GEI score. In addition, the findings support that the performance of the kingdom regarding the green economy is affected after the COVID-19 crisis. Thus, the paper provides original visions for policy makers to encourage the transition to green economy which constitutes the main locomotive to attain the economic, social and environment sustainability for the kingdom.

Introduction

The environmental degradation and pollution besides the rapid spread of COVID-19 crisis across countries in the world have disrupted the livelihoods and undermined the well-being. The recovery from these crises becomes the major challenge for communities. In fact, Governments need new ways to enhance the resilience of economies and societies and sustain the environmental quality. “Green” stimulus was one of the several proposals for pandemic alternative that helps the economy recovering and facilitates it transition to a cleaner and more sustainable path (Chen et al., 2020 ). Correspondingly, there is an urgent need to integrate climate and development strategies providing green, resilient, and inclusive development (Alsmadi & Alzoubi, 2022 ; Bowen & Hepburn, 2014 ; Mikhno et al., 2021 ; World Bank Group, 2021 ). These strategies may develop a new economy with green growth and sustainable development based on digitization and technologies, cross-sectorial efforts and systemic innovation adding an effective policy that is reflected in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of United Nations’ 2030 Agenda (Adamowicz, 2022 ; Dissanayake et al., 2021 ; Fouquet, 2019 ; Khoshnava et al., 2019 ; Mealy & Teytelboym, 2020 ; Merino-Saum et al., 2018 ). The SDGs were officially adopted in September 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) with 17 goals and 169 targets responding development in its three dimensions economic, social and environmental (United Nations, 2015 ).

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) defines the green economy as “one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities. In its simplest expression, a green economy can be thought of as one which is low carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive.” (UNEP, 2011 ). In December 2019, since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the European Commission underpin their economic and social model. This latter set the European Green Deal that is a new growth strategy dealing with sustainability in its three dimensions in the Recovery Plan for Europe (Commission et al., 2019 ).

In the same way, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) seeks to realize the sustainable development goals, especially that it characterized with economic development and continuous population growth coupled with the rapid urbanization. To do so, the KSA needs more than a traditional economy, an economy which goes in line with the achievement of the SDGs of the 2030 Agenda. The ‘Vision 2030’ program based on three pillars a vibrant society, a thriving economy and an ambitious nation represents a departure of Saudi Arabia to a novel economy and society however it is a significant challenge that need new efforts to balance between economic growth and sustainable development. Indeed, to accomplish this program, several series of policies and strategies are necessary to be developed based on a framework for the implantation of environmental and economic sustainability and promoting social well-being. To realize these policies, the government launches several projects and initiatives such as the Saudi Green Initiative, NEOM project and Saudi MADE program (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 2016 ; A Sustainable Saudi Vision–Vision 2030 ).

In this regard, this paper aims to examine how green is the KSA and how it performs to achieve sustainable development during the period 2015–2020 using a novel economic index adopted from EEPSE Green Economy Index (EEPSE GEI). This index is based on the Quintuple Helix Innovation Model (QHIM) which shows the importance of the relationship among the economic actors; education, industry, government, society and environment. Each system is connecting with the other functioning as spiral that generates a national, regional and global impact (Rybalkin et al., 2021 ). This index system technique combined with the QHIM serves as analytical tools for pursuing SDGs (Franc & Karadžija, 2019 ; König et al., 2020 ). Additionally, it represents a powerful decision-making tool, proven by the international organization such as the United Nations and UNESCO (Baguma et al., 2016 ; Millard, 2018 ) allowing to frame research and policies to build resilient infrastructures, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation.

Our theoretical and empirical contributions in this paper are twofold. First, most of the contemporary research has been focused on the renewable energy consumption–environment nexus without admitting how green economy can close the gap between economic activity and sustainable development in Saudi Arabia. As far as we are concerned, to our knowledge, there is very few studies that have examined the combination of the two main frameworks of the green economy and sustainable development in Saudi Arabia (AlArjani et al., 2021 ; Albanawi, 2015 ; Alwakid et al., 2020 ). Second, from an empirical side and compared to existing studies, this paper adopts a novel index system technique that assesses the performance of green economic development and reflect the sustainable development goals achievement for the case of Saudi Arabia.

The remainder of this manuscript is organized as follows: The literature on the importance of the green economy and sustainable development was reviewed in section two. In section three, the methodology, data sources and variables used in this study are displayed. In section four, the finding of this research was reported. The last section drew the conclusion and proposed some policy implication.

Literature review

The need to develop of a new economy, new policy growth and new economic measurement become a necessity for economies to attain the SDGs established by the United Nations. In fact, the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development represents an action plan for the economists, politicians, society, and the planet, which seeks sustainable development in its three dimensions, economic, social and environmental (Khoshnava et al., 2019 ). Green economy is estimated as a catalyzer to this new economic program as it aims to improve the efficiency of resource use, ensure the ecosystem resilience and enhance the social equity (Brears, 2018 ).

In 1989, the concept of green economy was established for the first time in the Blueprint for a Green Economy report prepared for the United Kingdom Government by a group of economists in the field (Pearce et al., 1989 ). In 2008, the UNEP developed the Green Economy Initiative to support investment in green sectors and encourage greening specific area (UNEP, 2008 ). In 2012, the UNGA convened UN Conference on Sustainable Development Rio + 20, in which they consider green economy a tool to achieve sustainable development (United Nations, 2012 ). The green economy term and concepts related to it like green growth and sustainable development have progressed from its appearance until now (Dogaru, 2021 ).

Existing literature reviews on green economy and sustainability during the past years have prioritized qualitative research method to present new concepts, tool and approach related to this field (Capasso et al., 2019 ; Diyar et al., 2014 ; Loiseau et al., 2016 ; Merino-Saum et al., 2020 ).

In a recent research, Capasso et al. ( 2019 ) show that more than 113 scientific articles focused on innovation, environmental and economic issues for 2010–2016 period using the approach of evidence-informed review methodology, explored that green economy needs new competence in the private and public sectors as well as developing green technologies is crucial to realize green growth. Most important, the quality and the relevance of physical resources, skills, technology, markets, institutions and policies can be not only drivers for green growth but also barriers. In the same trend, Zhironkin and Cehlár ( 2022 ) confirm that a true transition to green economy requires production and consumption saturation of green technologies coupled with a sustainable development of all industries. D’Amato and Korhonen ( 2021 ) applied the Natural Step Framework in their research to detect the contribution of the circular economy, bioeconomy and green economy for achieving global sustainability goals. They approve that the complementarity between the three narratives is crucial to provide important plans for sustainability transformations post-COVID-19 as well as there is a necessity for more universal systems and integrative research work on potentially sustainability narratives. Capabilities to advance the green economy and the reorientation of the existing economic structure to an environmentally friendly one is not an easy task for countries. In the same line, Ali et al. ( 2021 ) applied the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analytical tool to explore strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of Ghana’s efforts to be greener. Results show that despite the implementation of different policies and strategies regarding the green economy, Ghana still suffer from inadequate long-term policies, inadequate funding for technologies innovations and weak institutions. The intensive use of capital and the lack of control over the destruction of natural capital represent other factors that can threat the environment and delay the progress to the green economy.

In line with SDGs of the 2030 Agenda, several research discussions interested to clarify quantitatively the importance of these goals for the nations’ transition toward green economy. The SDGs index launched in 2015 is one of the best tools that presents information on countries’ performance regarding the SDGs. The overall index indicates the country’s position compared to the best possible score across all SDGs. In the sustainable development report of 2021, a significant decline in the average SDG index caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This crisis has a direct impact on the three sustainable development’s dimensions that call countries to take actions to create economic recovery and achieve the SDGs (Sachs et al., 2021 ). Merino-Saum et al. ( 2018 ), determine the relationship between SDGs and Natural Resources using 494 green economy indicators derived from 12 different frameworks concentrating on green economy and green growth. Strong interlinkages with different intensities were interpreted as well as all SDGs are related to at least one Natural Resources in the green economy indicators perception. Basing on global “green” economy index, results shows that hydrocarbon-exporting countries presents the lowest level of the rating, which inquires new level of management from public and private sectors (Prudnikova, 2020 ). For instance, countries with greater environmental patenting rates, lower CO 2 emissions, and efficient stringent environmental policies are more capable to the transition toward the green world. This ranking is based on data-driven approach to analyze green production capabilities across countries between 1994 and 2014 (Mealy & Teytelboym, 2020 ). In further research, dynamic indicators of green growth and green investments indicate that Russia have recorded a significant growth of green investments and it remains behind the leading countries of the world between 2000 and 2018 (Tarkhanova et al., 2020 ). Recently, Petrushenko and Grunwaldt ( 2021 ) outlines the importance of sustainable development at the local level with the example of Kyiv city in Ukraine during the period 2017–2019. To do so, they applied the QHIM. Findings show that the city and the country in whole can mark a real transition to achieve the SDGs only with the accelerating in the transformation of the projects’ structure that ensures the development of economic, social and environmental aspects. To know the relationships between the variables affecting SDGs and support decision-making in Latin American countries, the QHIM was integrated using 20 indicators related to the SDGs. The QHIM findings indicate the importance of harmony between the five systems of the model (Barcellos-Paula et al., 2021 ). Using the same model (QHIM), Lavrinenko et al. ( 2019 ) tried to evaluate the sustainable development and the importance of the green economy in the European Union (EU) countries for the period 2016–2017. The authors confirmed the positive role of “green economy” in the sustainable development in the EU countries. Kasztelan ( 2021 ) also demonstrates the importance of the implementation of green economy in the EU countries between 2000 and 2018 through a synthetic evaluation index composed of 27 indicators. The findings indicate a slowdown in the greening processes due to lack of energy efficiency, low resource productivity rate and social exclusion. However, China represents a good example of realizing a significant green growth and improving its sustainable development. Ecological civilization and social progress besides economic development and innovations are the main factors promoting the green economic growth according to a comprehensive index system of green economy introduced by Lin and Zhou ( 2022 ). Another new index presented by Usubiaga-Liaño and Ekins ( 2021 ) is the Strong Environmental Sustainability Index based on the Environmental Sustainability Gap framework. This index is composed of 21 indicators in which each of them is related to the functions of natural capital. The main findings show that the functions of natural capital decreased in 28 European countries representing weak performance in indicators related to pollution and the health ecosystem.

In the context of the KSA, few researches concentrate to explore the relationship among green economy and SDGs with quantitative approach (AlArjani et al., 2021 ; Albanawi, 2015 ; Alwakid et al., 2020 ). In fact, Albanawi ( 2015 ) examines the main barriers, strategies and opportunities of KSA sustainable development and greener infrastructure through the analysis of journal articles and available literature statistics and data from government. The study concludes that there is a need to the implement of greener projects and environmental initiative. Nevertheless, Alwakid et al. ( 2020 ) are interested to explore the development of green entrepreneurship through the analysis of the relationships between cultural characteristics and environmentally friendly entrepreneurship during the period 2015–2018. These relationships are tested using 84 observations from 21 cities analyzed with regression models. Results verify that the level of green entrepreneurial activity across cities in the KSA increases with specific cultural characteristics, such as environmental actions and environmental consciousness.

In a different study, AlArjani et al. ( 2021 ) represent the first study applying mathematical model through the row geometric mean method to quantify the achievement level toward the SDGs. The model covers three goals linked to the gross domestic product, sustainable energy consumption and employment capacity. The study confirms that the KSA achieves only 57% of studied goals that requires more effort in advancing resources in alternative energy sources, including renewable energy. Alwakid et al. ( 2021 ) approve that green entrepreneurial activity increases all the sustainable development components during the period 2012–2017 through the data collected from the General Authority for Statistics from 13 Saudi Arabian cities.

This review exposes different studies that addressed the use of indicators related to the green economy and the SDGs achievement, but no existing index considers the relationships among the three dimensions of sustainable development (social, economic and environmental) with a particular focus on the green economy and sustainable development of KSA. Thus, the purpose research is to curry out new evaluation to explore the development sustainability and how green is the KSA during the period 2015–2020.

Methodology

Introduction of quintuple helix innovation model and sdgs.

To analyze green economy trend and sustainable development in the KSA, we adopt the EEPSE GEI introduced in 2021by Rybalkin et al. ( 2021 ). This index combines educational, economic, political, societal, and environmental indicators that is inspired from the QHIM. This latter represents a reference for many organizations like the United Nations and the European Union in their guidelines and handbooks production (König et al., 2020 ). Also, in the United Nation Report, Baguma et al. ( 2016 ) approve that the QHIM provides all knowledge needed to bring all the SDGs comprising environmental sustainability. The helix model developed through the economic and society needs and progress that seeks to describe the dynamic relation among the actors of a society. The double helix model is the first helix model that includes a linear linkage between academia and entrepreneurs (Gibbons et al., 1994 ). The development of information and communication technologies leads to the necessity to add new helix which establish knowledge and innovation in society, namely government developing the triple helix model. This model is an innovation spiral model that explains the importance of innovation among the three strands and aligns the educational system with the needs of labor market (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000 ). The Quadruple Helix is introduced due to the rapid progress of knowledge society. The fourth element added to the first three mentioned is media-based and culture-based public (Carayannis & Campbell, 2009 ). Later, significant challenges and crises in the world, especially pollution and environment degradation were the most important factors for the introduction of the QHIM. The fifth added dimension called environment highlights the sociological transformations and the natural environment significance. The natural environment in the QHIM aims to generate new green technologies as well as preserve the humanity (Barcellos-Paula et al., 2021 ; Carayannis & Campbell, 2010 ; Franc & Karadžija, 2019 ).

In the QHIM, each system presents a knowledge helix that functions as a spiral connecting with the other systems. This connection creates knowledge as an output of one system which represents an input for the other systems of the QHIM. Figure  1 describes this continue circulation of knowledge within the five systems which stimulates knowledge, sustainability development and innovations creation besides it makes all systems affect each other (Carayannis et al., 2012 ).

The Quintuple Helix model and its function. Source (Carayannis et al., 2012 )

For instance, the first system of QHIM is -education- that represents the human capital development. The second system -economic- emphasis the economic capital, while the third system -political system- focus on political and legal capital. The fourth system -societal- describes information and social capital, which are basic element of innovation participant. The last system -environment- represents the fundamental factor to realize greener economy and sustainable development.

The SDGs represent the action plan for achieving sustainable development in the world, but the challenge for the countries is how to operationalize and realize these goals. To achieve the SGDs all stakeholders such as, industries, civil society and academia must work together (Sachs et al., 2019 ). The KSA launched different initiatives and strategies responding to the SDGs starting from the introduction of Vision 2030 by HRH the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2016 down to the launch of The Saudi Green Initiative and The Middle East Green Initiative in 2021.

The SDGs framework and the Helix models are commanding tools for educating and progressing societies despite their different logics. Thus, the helix models afford conceptual frames centered on the linkage and the relation among academia, economy, government, civil society and the environment, while the SDGs provide practical plan actions and very specific targets in different domains like politics, social economic, environment and education (König et al., 2020 ). However, there is a need of new measure that response to the combination of both frameworks.

The purpose of emerging a new composite measure is to formulate an instrument for researchers and policy makers to assess how green is the country in our case the KSA and how it progresses to achieve development sustainability presented by the SDGs.

A composite indicator is established using 42 indicators of green economy and indicators related to SDGs covering the five dimensions of the QHIM. The index inspired from the results of the study of (Rybalkin et al., 2021 ) cannot be a single indictor but a composite index due to the multidimensional process. However, it is easily interpreted by any user.

Selection of indicators

The QHIM has proved it efficiency as an inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary framework. It examines the synergies between society, ecology and economy and represents the perfect model that can be used to assess the transition to the green economy and achievement of the sustainable development. From the perspective of the QHIM, 42 specific indicators associated to the green economy and the SDGs are selected. The indicators are grouped on five systems: education, economic, civil societal, government and environment (" Appendix "). Some indicators differ from those of EEPSE GEI in Rybalkin et al. ( 2021 ) research due to the missing data for the KSA. However, other indicators are chosen in line with the indicators of SDGs. The data are collected from different online databases like the World Bank Indicators and OECD Statistics.

For instance, the study covers annual data over the period of 2015–2020 for the KSA indicators. The selected period was chosen for two main reasons. Firstly, the year 2015 represents the date of launching the SDGs plan action. Secondly, since 2019 the COVID-19 pandemic appeared and upsets the economic, social and environmental features all over the world, which is crucial to educate how this pandemic has impacted the performance of the KSA.

The construction of the index

The construction of the final EEPSE GEI requires three steps. The first step consists on dimensionless standardization to make all indicators comparable. The next step is the standardization of indicators which a very important since the indicators are expressed in different units in the sub-dimensions. In EEPSE GEI, the normalization was carried out according to the method of Z-score. To observe them better, we use the transition to T-score by the formula T = Z × 10 + 50 . Then, all the systems corresponding to the QHIM are attained as arithmetic means of the corresponding indicators. Finally, the general indicator EEPSE GEI is estimated as the arithmetic mean of the values of five systems.

Results and discussion

This section presents and discusses the empirical findings of this study. The application of the QHIM in the EEPSE GEI affords qualified and accessible indicators from official sources which put decision-making more certain. With the QHIM it is possible to identify in the one hand the effect of each helix and its links with the SDGs and in the another hand the performance of the country globally toward green economy and sustainable development (Barcellos-Paula et al., 2021 ; Bonnet et al., 2021 ; Janoušková et al., 2018 ). Table ​ Table1 1 defines the EEPSE GEI results of the KSA according to its most recent data indicators. A significant progress of EEPSE GEI score of this country was proved from 47.70 to 51.12 among the 2015 to 2020 period. Comparing our findings to the results of the study of Rybalkin et al. ( 2021 ) which are taken as basis, the KSA can be considered within the countries with high score since 2017. Despite the result confirming that this first is performing well in overall indicators related to the green economy and sustainable development, the study pinpointed opportunities for improvement in all systems. In fact, the KSA reaches a EEPSE GEI score equal to 51.12 in 2020 which is close to the Estonia’s score (51.07). The lowest value of EEPSE GEI score was in 2016 with a score equaling 47.32 due to the weak performance of economic and environmental system. The weak performance of the economic system is affected by decreased oil price in 2016 and the slowdown of the Gross Domestic Product while the weakness of the environmental system is affected essentially by a high per capita energy-related CO 2 emissions (Burck et al., 2016 ; World Bank Group, 2016 ). Yet, the EEPSE GEI score increases with 9.76% between 2016 and 2017 remarking the best performance of the KSA thanks to environment system performance. Indeed, in 2017, the environment system has recorded the strongest results among all systems during the six years with a score equaling 55.55. This progress can be a result of the effort of the KSA regarding environmental dimension with the announcement of the National Renewable Energy Program in 2017 that seeks to diversify local energy sources and reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the launch of the National Environment Strategy in 2018 (Saudi Green Initiative, 2022 ). Though, we can observe an important decrease in the performance of the fifth system in the last two years which reflects the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the environment sustainability and the failure of renewable energy in advancing the economy and protecting the environment (AlArjani et al., 2021 ; Kahia et al., 2021 ). In this point, the KSA still needs some improvements such importing more environmentally friendly technologies, encouraging renewable energy projects and encouraging the use of effective energy technologies not only for industries but also for consumers to meet the industrial and domestic energy demand.

The performance scores evolution across all the EEPSE GEI systems for Saudi Arabia

Source the authors’ calculations in SPSS according to statistical data

The bold values indicated the best performance score among each system. However, the bold values of the last column revealed the evolution of EEPSE GEI score

The results of each system were analyzed according to its importance in the EEPSE GEI. Considering the importance of the five systems of the index, the political factor represents the most important determinant in the index then education system. The civil society is in the third place, while the environment takes the fourth place, and the economy system has the least important role (Rybalkin et al., 2021 ). Indeed, the political system score of the KSA raises significantly since 2015 and represents the best value among the other systems in 2020 with 54.09 score which is almost the same score of France (54.06). This result indicates that political system has an important effect on green economy and sustainable development in 2020 and support the economy to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to the establishment of Vision 2030 infrastructure that provides to the KSA an important prospect for implanting the SDGs into the existing governance system and records this strong value (Toward Saudi Arabia’s Sustainable Tomorrow, 2018 ). Similarly, the education system performs strongly on sustainable development according to the findings, especially in 2020 thanks to the supportive national strategy for continuing education quality in the pandemic among the online education and the encouragement of research and development. This academic system is the only system that witnessed a continuous rise over the study period which verifies the good pathway of the KSA to achieve the SDG4 (Quality Education) (United Nations, 2018 ).

Concerning the civil society system, it noticed a weak performance on sustainable development with an incessant decrease value since 2018, where the weakest value is given with a score equaling to 49.67 in 2020. This result can be associated with COVID-19 pandemic’s socio-economic impact since it directly impacted the healthcare sector and shut down the educational institute due to home quarantine. Therefore, the KSA has different potential for improvements by establishing National Strategy for Social Development which seeks to add financial resources, provide personal protection equipment to healthcare population, support online education, improve the internet service and introduce supportive labor market regulations targeting private sector which go in line with the SDG1 (No Poverty), SDG2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG3 (Good Health and Well-Being) (United Nations, 2020 ). At the same time, the economic capital system performed poorly toward the sustainable development, especially in 2019 with a score equal to 47.14. This could be attributed to the oil prices crisis in the world market coinciding with the health crisis and caused the shutdown of business around the globe for nearly one year as well as the weak consumption of renewable energy during the last six years. Far greater efforts are needed to achieve the SDGs for economies heavily reliant on oil such the KSA starting by diversifying the economy and localizing the oil and gas sector besides maximizing investing capabilities in different aspects to realize SDG7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), and SDG11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities).

Conclusion and policy implications

Several important indicators are introduced as a tool to analyze the green economy development and describe the extent of sustainable goals achievement. Thus, few scholars tried to make assessment of this interplay using multidimensional index (Barcellos-Paula et al., 2021 ; Bonnet et al., 2021 ; König et al., 2020 ; Lavrinenko et al., 2019 ; Rybalkin et al., 2021 ). The present paper examines how green is the KSA and how it performs toward the sustainable development realization. For the empirical purpose, our intention was to apply a novel system index composed of five systems reflecting the pillars of the QHIM which are education, economy, politics, society and environment which is proven as a powerful decision-making tool. The empirical finding indicates the unsteady performance of the Kingdom during the period 2015–2020. For the first three years, a constant increase in the EEPSE GEI score was observed. This progress is explained by the increase in the five systems’ performance during this period specifically the environment system performance with an increase of 23% from 2015 to 2018. Since 2019, the period of COVID-19 pandemic appearance, the EEPSE GEI score was declined. This result is attributed also to the significant descent of the environment system score. However, the political system performs strongly toward green economy and sustainable development achievement in the same period.

Despite the empirical results indicate that the KSA has a good performance toward the green economy and the attainment of the sustainable development, it has not yet reached its best performance and it still faces major challenges on environment protection, well-being enhancing, and economic diversifying. In addition, the SDGs Dashboard report of 2020 shows that the Kingdom is ranked 97 th among 163 countries in terms of sustainable development goals achievement which confirms that the country needs to make further efforts concerning the sustainability in its three dimensions (United Nations, 2020 ). Concerning the economic dimension, the empirical findings show the feeble renewable energy consumption, the weak sustainable competitiveness since the KSA is ranked the 108 among 180 countries and the lack of a coherent ecosystem process to support the innovation capabilities represent the major weaknesses (Schwab & Zahidi, 2020 ). Concerning the environment dimension, some factors participate to the environment degradation such the failure to reduce CO 2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, the absence of environmental regulations and the weak climate change performance, the lack of consumers’ awareness regarding environmental protection, the energy use are some important weaknesses. Regarding the social dimensions, the global average score for gender equality, including reproductive health, empowerment, and economic status, has decreased since 2019 (Khan et al., 2021 ).

Consequently, it is crucial that policy makers develop some technological, financial, and environmental policies. These policies can help take advantage of the strengths, especially that the KSA is a pioneer on launching and establishing strategies and initiatives that go in line with the SDGs achievement and green economy development such the Saudi Vision 2030 and the National Transformation Program serving as solutions to the weakness and threats. Thus, the KSA needs to act more powerfully in more than one direction. Firstly, further encouragement of research and development concerning innovation and green technologies is needed to achieve the SDG4 and further SDG9, especially that the education system score increases steadily from 46.66 in 2015 to 53.02 in 2020 reflecting the good path of the KSA toward the importance of the education in the building skills that are necessary for the labor market. It is imperative to boost green and renewable energy investments, reduce energy consumption in industries and implant green technologies besides set up more environmental regulation such applying a smart tax system which responds to the realizing of SDG7, SDG9 and SDG13 (Climate action). In addition, promote the consumer’s and users’ awareness of ecological protection is very important step to the Saudi Arabia’s transition to the green economy and realizing sustainable development serving the SDG3, SDG11 and SDG12 (Responsible consumption and production) achievements, after finding that the civil society system performs poorly regarding the green economy and the sustainable development during the period 2015–2020. In fact, the Kingdom starts the implementation of such strategies in launching the National Environment Strategy in 2018 and the updating of the National Urban Strategy 2030 in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program (A Sustainable Saudi Vision–Vision 2030 ). The decline of oil consumption due to the economic impacts of the COVID-19 health crisis, the climate change mitigation and the environment protection represent a big challenge for the KSA since it is rating highly insufficient (Saudi Arabia | Climate Action Tracker, 2021 ). This effect requires an urgent effort such Saudi Green Initiative 2021 to reduce the carbon emissions and realize the SDG13 that help to ameliorate the air quality and reduce the environment degradation. However, this strategy will take a long time to be fruitful aiming to reach net zero by 2060 (Saudi Green Initiative, 2022 ). In order to achieve SDG14 (Life below water) and SDG15 (Life on land), the KSA will launch different initiatives like Saudi Aquaculture Society, Desert Preservation Initiative in 2025 that aims to achieve 20% of protected land by 2030 noticing that it have just nearly 16% of land and sea under protection which is very neglected (Saudi Green Initiative, 2022 ). In short, the KSA is on the good path toward green economy and realizing the SDGs, but the implementation and the realization of the offered initiatives and strategies are very hard for all the economic actors and take a long time to be productive.

To conclude, promoting the transition to the green economy is vital to improve the economic, social, and environmental potential as well to ensure a sustainable future. Yet, to assure this transition, the cooperation between the government, academia, industry, society, and nature which reflects the five systems of the Quintuple Helix Model become a requirement for all the economies.

Acknowledgements

This research has been funded by Scientific Research Deanship at the University of Ha’il – Saudi Arabia through project number RG-21072.

See Tables ​ Indicators2, 2 , ​ Indicators3, 3 , ​ Indicators4, 4 , ​ Indicators5, 5 , ​ Indicators6 6 and ​ 157 7

Quality of education system indicators—human capital

GII: Global Innovation Index, SJR: Scientific Journal Rankings, WBI: World Bank Indicators, WDI: World Development Indicators

Economic aspects indicators—economic capital

CCPI: Climate Change Performance Index, GII: Global Innovation Index, GSCI: Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index, OECD: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, WBI: World Bank Indicators

Political system indicators—political capital

CCPI: Climate Change Performance Index, GCR: Global Competitiveness Report, GII: Global Innovation Index, TTCR: The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report, WBI: World Bank Indicators

Civil Society indicators—information capital

GE: the Global Economy, GII: Global Innovation Index, OECD: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, SPI: Social Progress Index, WBI: World Bank Indicators

Environment indicators—natural capital

GII: Global Innovation Index, TTCR: The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report, WBI: World Bank Indicators

EEPSE GEI Systems and relevant SDGs

Data availability

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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News Details

Exploring sustainable development & the human impact of natural disasters

Authored by: Carson Easterly

Photography by: Krista Patton

Faculty & Research

A Q&A with research assistant professor Chenyi Ma

What factors allow people to prepare for and recover from natural disasters?  Dr. Chenyi Ma , a research assistant professor at Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2), conducts interdisciplinary research that investigates the role of inequality in disasters’ impact and points to policy solutions. Having first come to SP2 as a  PhD in Social Welfare  student, he now teaches SP2 students while conducting research on disaster risk reduction and sustainable development. 

What drew you to SP2 and Penn? 

Disaster research requires interdisciplinary collaboration, and Penn is the ideal place. I have mentors at SP2, Wharton, and Engineering and access to rich, multidisciplinary academic resources. SP2’s social justice mission and commitment to sustainable development also align with my values.

Twelve years ago, I came to SP2 as a student in the PhD in Social Welfare Program. I continued my research on the human impacts of natural disasters as a post-doctoral student.  Now, as a research assistant professor at SP2, I focus on the social determinants of health and behavioral outcomes in disaster contexts, including public health emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Before joining Penn, you worked as a program officer for Education for Sustainable Development at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). How does that background connect to your research and teaching? 

My work at WWF focused on promoting a holistic approach known as Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). With a student-centered learning approach similar to social work education, ESD empowers individuals with the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes needed to make informed decisions and take responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability, and a just society.  ESD also encourages researchers to employ Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) — a collaborative research approach that involves community members — to foster both researchers’ and community members’ knowledge and ability to sustainably manage their local natural resources while respecting, and even sometimes using, indigenous culture, knowledge, and social infrastructure. Student-centered teaching and collaborative research continue to be important themes of my work.

How would you define sustainable development?

Sustainable development is about meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. This approach encompasses social, economic, and political dimensions. My current research delves into the social dimension, recognizing that addressing environmental challenges requires collaboration and co-learning among natural and social scientists, professionals, and stakeholders to find solutions. 

You currently research social vulnerability and disaster preparedness, housing and urban resilience, environmental justice, energy policy, and social epidemiology. What drew you to these research interests?

One of the most important components of sustainable development is disaster risk reduction. As a student at Washington University’s Master of Social Work program and SP2’s PhD program, I began to think of questions about the people affected by disaster risk — for instance, who is more likely to suffer from damage as a result of natural disasters? Which survivors of disasters are more susceptible to mental illness? Do existing social policy programs adequately address the needs of disaster victims?

To answer these questions and others, I began to conduct empirical research. For example, using large datasets and GIS mapping, I led a project that examined the severity of home damage caused by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Homes occupied by renters were four times more likely to have been destroyed than those occupied by homeowners. This is direct evidence that low-income renters are extremely socially vulnerable to housing damage caused by climate-related disasters.  

Through another study, I found there were racial and ethnic disparities in the prevalence of mental illness among Hurricane Sandy survivors in New Jersey and New York City. Such disparities, largely accounted for by different levels of exposure to a disaster, underscore the need for increased provision of social support to more susceptible groups to effectively mitigate these risks.

What kind of an impact do you hope your work can have on policy in the face of climate inequality?

I hope policymakers might consider public-private partnerships like the National Flood Insurance Program to address private insurance affordability for low-income households who are most vulnerable to housing damage. One of my recent research studies examined how income inequality could influence household consumption behaviors related to disaster preparedness, with a specific focus on private homeowners’ insurance. Observing Hurricane Maria survivors in Puerto Rico, the study found that private homeowners’ insurance — the most important financial tool to mitigate property losses — was unaffordable for low-income households, and income inequality further exacerbated this unaffordability.  

Another of my current studies provides new insight into how public assistance, such as cash transfer welfare programs, can effectively address vulnerable groups who have a high level of risk perception and the intention to prepare for disasters, yet lack the financial resources to do so. The study examines the progress of human behavioral changes for disaster preparedness along three developmental stages, from “not prepared,” to “have the intention to prepare,” and ultimately to “already prepared.” The preliminary findings of this study suggest disparities between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites. While Hispanics are more likely to have the  intention  to prepare and exhibit higher levels of risk perception than non-Hispanic whites, they are less likely to take concrete actions of preparedness. This is largely due to the  unequal  access to preparedness resources between the two groups.  

You’ve taught the course Quantitative Reasoning and Program Evaluations at SP2. What are some highlights of your work in the classroom?   

The students and their research projects are always the highlight of my time in the classroom. I view my role as a facilitator who works with them to build their research capacity for completing their own projects. One significant component of ESD is learning by doing. My Penn students adopt a “learning by researching” approach to focus on ways in which their research projects can practically address critical issues in their communities, including environmental, health, and political issues. 

What are you looking forward to discovering next?

I am continuing to explore maladaptive responses to climate-related disasters and public health emergencies. My previous research found that natural disaster survivors often exhibit adaptation behaviors, including maladaptive behaviors like increased alcohol use, after a disaster when they lack financial assistance for recovery. For a current project, I am examining household decision-making processes and underlying maladaptive responses to energy insecurity during the pandemic. My hope is to provide new insights into how energy policies can be more responsive to future disasters. 

Chenyi Ma, MSW, PhD

Research Assistant Professor

office: 215.746.8976

machenyi@upenn.edu

UN Tourism | Bringing the world closer

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UN Tourism and Croatia to Establish Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism

• 12 Apr 2024

UN Tourism is to work with the Government Croatia and the University of Zagreb to establish a research and development centre focused on sustainable tourism.

Croatia currently serves on UN Tourism’s Committee on Tourism and Sustainability, having chaired it between 2019 and 2023. Alongside the Government’s record of promoting responsible and sustainable tourism practices, this clear leadership and support for UN Tourism’s core values make it the ideal location to host a collaborative platform to drive innovation and catalyse positive change in the tourism sector.  

Croatia leads by example in growing tourism in a sustainable manner

This landmark centre will engage stakeholders from the public and private sectors, academia, and civil society to will address some of the most critical challenges facing tourism, including:  

• Reducing the Environmental Impact of Tourism: The centre will prioritize initiatives to minimize waste generation and plastic usage, thereby mitigating the environmental footprint of tourism activities. 
• Increasing Usage of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency: By promoting the adoption of renewable energy sources and implementing energy-efficient practices, the centre aims to reduce carbon emissions associated with tourism operations. 
• Accelerating Adaptation to Climate Change: Recognizing the urgent need to address climate-related risks, the centre will support adaptation strategies to enhance the resilience of tourism destinations and communities. 
• Preserving Social Sustainability and Local Communities: The centre will work to safeguard the cultural heritage and livelihoods of local communities by promoting responsible tourism practices and equitable distribution of benefits. 
• Enhancing Evidence-Based Policy Making: Through rigorous research and data analysis, the centre will provide policymakers with the evidence needed to formulate effective policies that balance tourism development with environmental and social considerations. 
• Providing Relevant and Updated Research: The centre will serve as a hub for cutting-edge research and knowledge exchange, delivering timely insights and best practices for the sustainable development of tourism. 

In Zagreb, the Minister of Tourism and Sport of Croatia Nikolina Brnjac and UN Tourism Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili signed a Memorandum of Understanding to create the cutting-edge research institution.  

Welcoming the collaboration, Secretary-General Pololikashvili said: “Croatia leads by example in growing tourism in a sustainable manner. The new research centre in Zagreb will contribute to UN Tourism’s commitment to data-driven policymaking at the regional, national and destination level, ensuring tourism grows responsibly and inclusively, for the benefit of communities everywhere.”   

Minister of Tourism and Sport of Croatia Nikolina Brnjac adds: “I am proud that UN Tourism, the most relevant tourism organization globally, has recognized our efforts in Croatian tourism management reform and our strong commitment to sustainable tourism and put forward the initiative to create the first UN Tourism Centre for sustainable tourism in Croatia together with the Ministry of Tourism and Sport of the Republic of Croatia. With the University of Zagreb as a partner in the establishment of this Centre, I am convinced that this Centre will be successful and provide very relevant research for future sustainable development of tourism.” 

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Article Contents

1. introduction, 2. overview of jeddah’s context, 3. governance frameworks in jeddah, 4. urbanization patterns and city structuring in jeddah, 5. comparative analysis of urban development: jeddah and similar cities, 6. strategic analysis of jeddah, 7. planning for the future city, 8. addressing the implementation challenges in jeddah’s urban planning, 9. recommendations and conclusions for jeddah’s urban development, author contributions.

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Jeddah strategic approaches to sustainable urban development and vision 2030 alignment

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Haytham Alhubashi, Mohammed Alamoudi, Ayman Imam, Ahmad Abed, Ibrahim Hegazy, Jeddah strategic approaches to sustainable urban development and vision 2030 alignment, International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies , Volume 19, 2024, Pages 1098–1111, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijlct/ctae055

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This research article provides an in-depth look into the urban development trajectory of Jeddah, a historic port city in Saudi Arabia, which has developed into a vibrant urban center that reflects its rich past and ambitious future. The study systematically explores Jeddah’s journey through different lenses—its strategic geographical location as a maritime and pilgrimage gateway, its historical development dating back to the seventh century and its transformation influenced by diverse cultural and economic interactions. It comprehensively analyzes Jeddah’s social and economic fabric, demographic trends and the impact of these factors on the city’s urban landscape. This article examines the governance and regulatory frameworks that shape development policies in Jeddah and addresses how these frameworks are designed to meet the challenges of modern urbanization, including rapid population growth, infrastructure requirements and environmental sustainability. The research also examines the city’s response to these challenges, focusing on strategic planning, infrastructure development and sustainable urban initiatives that align with the goals of Saudi Vision 2030. This article provides an in-depth understanding of urban dynamics in Jeddah, presenting it as a case study for managing growth and modernization in rapid urban environments.

With its unique location along the Red Sea coast, Jeddah is an interesting case study in urban development, blending historical significance with rapid modernization. This research article embarks on a comprehensive exploration of Jeddah’s development, analyzing how its strategic geographical location made it a vital maritime and pilgrimage center and how this affected its social, economic and cultural landscape. The study traces the city’s transformation from a humble fishing village to a bustling, diverse metropolis, highlighting the role of historical events and cultural exchanges in shaping its urban identity.

Furthermore, the article delves into Jeddah’s demographic shifts and socioeconomic dynamics, examining how its population growth, characterized by diversity and rapid urbanization, poses challenges and opportunities for urban planning and development. The research examines Jeddah’s economic landscape, discussing the city’s transition from a trade-focused economy to a more diversified economic structure, with a particular focus on sectors such as tourism, finance and technology in line with Saudi Vision 2030.

The governance structures and planning frameworks guiding Jeddah’s urban development are analyzed in detail, revealing how these systems have adapted to the city’s growing needs and aspirations. The study provides a precise understanding of urbanization patterns, land use trends and key structuring elements that shape the current and future urban fabric of Jeddah. It identifies and assesses the city’s strategic issues, including housing needs, transportation systems, environmental sustainability and economic diversification and discusses comprehensive responses and planning strategies to address these challenges.

Finally, the article presents a multifaceted action plan for urban development in Jeddah, focusing on sustainable infrastructure projects, urban renewal initiatives, housing development strategies and integrating smart city and green urbanism principles. The recommendations emphasize the importance of comprehensive and sustainable urban planning that accommodates economic growth, social inclusion and environmental care, in line with the broader goals of Saudi Vision 2030. This expanded study enhances our understanding of Jeddah’s unique urban landscape and offers valuable insights and lessons for urban development strategies in fast-growing cities worldwide.

2.1. Geographic and historical background of Jeddah

Jeddah’s location on the Red Sea coast has been the cornerstone of its historical and economic importance ( Figure 1 ). Located halfway along the coast of Saudi Arabia, it enjoys a strategic advantage as a maritime gateway. The city’s coast extends over 60 km, providing a natural maritime trade and communications channel with the wider Red Sea region, East Africa and beyond. This geographical location made Jeddah a focal point in ancient and modern trade routes and a melting pot of different cultures and civilizations [ 1 ].

Jeddah geographic location.

Jeddah dates back to at least the seventh century, and its history is intertwined with the spread of Islam. Originally a small fishing village, its transformation into a bustling port city began when it became a gateway for Muslim pilgrims heading to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. This status has greatly enhanced the importance of Jeddah, leading to its growth and prosperity.

Over the centuries, Jeddah has been influenced by various regional powers. Its architecture and urban fabric bear signs of Ottoman, Egyptian and other influences, making the city a tapestry of historical narratives. The Al Balad Historic District, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a testament to this rich history [ 2 ]. The area is known for its unique Red Sea-style architecture, characterized by multistory buildings made of coral stone and featuring intricately carved wooden windows (Roshan).

Today, Jeddah’s commercial center and Hajj gateway role have fostered a multicultural environment. Merchants and pilgrims from Africa, Asia and other parts of the Middle East brought their customs, languages and traditions, contributing to the city’s diverse cultural landscape. This cosmopolitan nature is evident in Jeddah’s cuisine, art and social customs, which blend Arab, African and Asian influences.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, Jeddah has continued to develop, embracing modernity while preserving its historical heritage. The discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia and the subsequent economic boom accelerated Jeddah’s growth. Modern infrastructure projects, such as King Abdulaziz International Airport and Jeddah Islamic Port—one of the largest and busiest ports in the Middle East—have been crucial in maintaining Jeddah’s role as a commercial and logistics hub [ 3 ].

Today, Jeddah is a historic and modern city known for its bustling commercial districts, sprawling residential neighborhoods and vibrant cultural scene. This combination of ancient heritage and modern development makes Jeddah a unique urban center, reflecting its historical heritage and contemporary importance in the region.

2.2. Demographic and socioeconomic aspects

The demographic profile of Jeddah is characterized by its rapid growth and diversity ( Figure 2 ). With over 3.4 million residents, it is the second-largest city in Saudi Arabia and one of the most diverse. This diversity is partly due to a large expatriate community comprising a large proportion of the population. These expatriates come from around the world, attracted by Jeddah’s economic opportunities and relatively open urban culture compared to other Saudi cities [ 4 ].

Jeddah urban area growth.

The city’s annual growth rate of about 2.5% is considered one of the highest rates in the region. This increase is due to natural population growth and migration [ 5 ]. Jeddah attracts individuals and families from other parts of Saudi Arabia and beyond with the promise of job opportunities, higher standards of living and the city’s unique cultural and social environment. This influx has resulted in a dynamic and constantly evolving demographic landscape, impacting the city’s social fabric, urban planning needs and infrastructure requirements.

Economically, Jeddah’s importance to Saudi Arabia is multifaceted. Jeddah Islamic Port is the cornerstone of the national economy [ 6 ]. The port handles more than 65% of the country’s imports by sea and is a trade asset and a vital link in Saudi Arabia’s supply chain. Port efficiency and capacity are crucial in facilitating international trade, impacting industries across the country.

Aside from its port, Jeddah’s economy is diverse and dynamic. The city is a major commercial center with busy markets, shopping malls and commercial areas. The retail sector thrives throughout the year and receives an additional boost during the Hajj season, as millions of pilgrims add to the consumer base.

Jeddah’s hospitality sector is also thriving, supported by religious tourism associated with Hajj and Umrah and a growing number of leisure and business travelers. The city’s hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues reflect this vitality, contributing significantly to its economy.

Transportation is another significant economic sector. The presence of King Abdulaziz International Airport, one of the busiest airports in the region, and the city’s position as a central transportation hub for the Hajj season increase its economic standing [ 7 ].

Furthermore, Jeddah’s social and economic landscape is being shaped by Saudi Vision 2030. This ambitious plan aims to diversify the economy away from dependence on oil, and Jeddah is expected to play a pivotal role in this transformation. Efforts are being made to develop nonoil sectors such as finance, technology and tourism, providing new job opportunities and stimulating economic growth.

3.1. Overview of the legal and institutional context

Jeddah operates within a comprehensive legal framework, which is part of the broader regulatory environment in Saudi Arabia. This framework, which includes national laws and regulations, governs various aspects of city life, including urban development and environmental management. These laws have been customized to suit the local context of the city of Jeddah by its administrative bodies [ 8 ].

The most important of these laws are the urban development and zoning laws that regulate land use and the building and zoning laws in Jeddah. These laws play an essential role in ensuring that urban development proceeds in an orderly and sustainable manner, in line with the city’s overall vision for growth and development. Environmental regulations are also crucial to this legal framework, especially for the city of Jeddah due to its coastal location. These regulations include pollution control, waste management, natural resource conservation and addressing the city’s unique environmental challenges [ 9 ]. Figure 3 provides a visual representation of the city’s layout, showcasing the areas governed by these laws and the jurisdiction of the Jeddah Municipality.

Jeddah administrative boundaries.

The institutional structure in Jeddah is led by the Jeddah Municipality, which is the main administrative body responsible for urban planning, municipal services and the implementation of development projects. The municipality operates under the supervision of the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs, working to align its policies and procedures with national goals. In addition, many other local and national authorities contribute to the administration of Jeddah. These bodies, which focus on sectors such as transportation, housing and economic development, often collaborate with the Jeddah Municipality to coordinate policies and projects.

Saudi Vision 2030, the strategic framework for the Kingdom’s future, greatly influences legal and institutional changes in Jeddah. This vision aims to diversify economically, reduce dependence on oil revenues and strengthen the tourism, finance and technology sectors. Due to its economic and geographical importance, the city of Jeddah plays a pivotal role in this transformation. The vision has stimulated numerous urban development projects in Jeddah, which aim to enhance infrastructure, public services and overall quality of life. These projects are guided by a legal and institutional framework that supports innovation, efficiency and sustainability. Modernizing infrastructure is a significant focus of this vision, which in Jeddah includes developing transportation systems such as the Jeddah Metro, enhancing port facilities and expanding the airport.

3.2. Description of planning instruments and procedures

3.2.1. characterization of urban planning mechanisms and protocols in jeddah.

Urban planning in Jeddah is a comprehensive endeavor that includes a set of tools and procedures that guide the sustainable and systematic development of the city. This framework addresses various aspects of urban life, including land use, infrastructure development, environmental protection and social services.

The Jeddah Strategic Plan is at the heart of this framework, which serves as a blueprint for the city’s future development. It sets long-term goals and strategies for critical sectors such as housing, transportation, public services and environmental management [ 10 ]. The plan takes into account Jeddah’s growing population and economic aspirations, with an emphasis on the need for sustainable development. It aims to create adequate housing, develop effective public transportation systems, improve public facilities and improve residents’ quality of life.

Another critical element is the Jeddah Urban Growth Boundary (JUGB). This tool plays a vital role in managing urban expansion, identifying areas where development is encouraged and areas where it is restricted [ 11 ]. By controlling urban sprawl, the Bank of Jordan helps focus development within specific areas, facilitating the efficient provision of public services and infrastructure. It encourages densification in designated areas, promoting sustainable land use patterns, reducing commuting times and preserving natural and agricultural lands.

The planning and implementation schema integrates four quintessential elements [ 12 ].

3.2.2. Zoning ordinances

Zoning regulations form the bedrock of Jeddah’s urban planning, orchestrating land use to align with the city’s developmental vision while preserving its natural and historical assets. These ordinances categorize territories into residential, commercial, industrial and recreational zones, each subject to specific guidelines and limitations to ensure compatibility with adjacent sectors and the overarching city goals.

Residential areas : Tailored to foster a salubrious living environment, these zones prioritize accessibility to essential services like education, healthcare and commerce alongside the physical milieu’s quality.

Commercial districts : Positioned to stimulate economic activities without encroaching on residential serenity, these zones serve as nuclei for business and trade, designed for optimal accessibility and growth potential.

Industrial sectors : Located to mitigate noise, pollution and traffic impacts on residential vicinities, these areas accommodate manufacturing and other industrial pursuits, contributing to Jeddah’s economic vibrancy while preserving residential living standards.

Green spaces : Essential for the city’s ecological health and residents’ well-being, these areas offer recreational spaces and act as urban green belts, bolstering urban biodiversity and climate resilience.

3.2.3. Development control mechanisms

Jeddah employs stringent development control tactics to ensure construction activities are congruent with the city’s planning ideals and benchmarks. This entails comprehensive construction plan assessments, ongoing oversight and rigorous enforcement of zoning, building and environmental norms.

Plan assessment and endorsement: Development proposals undergo meticulous scrutiny to ensure compliance with zoning statutes, building codes and environmental edicts, fostering seamless integration into the urban fabric.

Monitoring and adherence: Active construction undertakings are vigilantly monitored to affirm conformity with sanctioned plans, addressing infractions to uphold architectural and environmental integrity.

Urbanization challenge mitigation: In light of Jeddah’s expansion, development control is pivotal in managing urbanization effects, such as infrastructural demands, traffic bottlenecks and environmental wear, advocating for sustainable urban growth.

3.2.4. Stakeholder engagement

Acknowledging the criticality of resident and stakeholder involvement in the urban planning discourse, Jeddah adopts a participatory strategy to ensure developmental outcomes resonate with communal desires and expectations. Engagement channels encompass:

Workshops and public assemblies : Venues for community members to express opinions, provide feedback and actively partake in planning endeavors.

Surveys and digital interfaces : Using technology to engage a broader audience, leveraging online surveys and platforms for comprehensive community input, ensuring a more inclusive participation framework.

Developmental impact : This inclusive engagement methodology enriches the relevance and acceptance of urban projects, engendering a communal sense of ownership and accountability, thereby enhancing project success and sustainability.

3.2.5. Synchronization with national initiatives

Jeddah’s urban planning endeavors are cohesively aligned with Saudi Vision 2030, a strategic blueprint aimed at economic diversification and life quality enhancement for its citizenry. This congruence ensures that Jeddah’s developmental activities bolster national objectives:

Economic diversification : Jeddah’s support for nonoil industries catalyzes job creation and stimulates economic growth.

Social advancement : Urban planning in Jeddah tackles essential quality-of-life facets, such as housing, healthcare and education, fostering societal well-being.

Environmental sustainability : By embedding sustainability in urban development, Jeddah confronts climate change challenges and promotes efficient resource utilization in alignment with Saudi Vision 2030’s environmental goals.

Through these comprehensive strategies, Jeddah is transforming its urban landscape and making a substantial contribution to Saudi Arabia’s overarching developmental and transformative ambitions, epitomizing a holistic and visionary approach to urban planning.

4.1. Current urbanization trends in Jeddah: growth, expansion and emerging challenges

Jeddah is experiencing an essential phase of urbanization characterized by rapid demographic growth and spatial expansion. The city’s population has exceeded 3.4 million and is growing annually at about 2.5% ( Figure 4 ). This increase in population is considered the main driver of urban expansion in Jeddah, leading to various developments and changes in the cityscape [ 13 ].

Jeddah current distribution of population density.

The physical growth of Jeddah is notable in its expanding urban footprint, which extends outward with new neighborhoods and developments, especially on the outskirts and along the coast. This expansion includes developing new residential areas, commercial areas and infrastructure projects. The demand for housing, fueled by a growing population, has increased residential construction projects. These projects range from high-density housing in the urban core to sprawling developments in the suburbs, diversifying the city’s housing market with options including luxury apartments and affordable family homes [ 14 ].

Alongside residential growth, Jeddah is also experiencing significant commercial development, reshaping its urban landscape. Demand for commercial and retail space has increased, leading to the construction of new shopping centers, business centers and mixed-use developments, particularly in new urban areas. Expanding the city’s commercial infrastructure caters to the growing consumer base and supports the local economy. Jeddah’s growth pattern shows a marked shift from a traditionally dense urban core to sprawling suburban areas. This trend is influenced by factors such as the desire for larger living spaces, land availability on the city’s outskirts and improved transportation networks that facilitate mobility.

However, with rapid urbanization come both challenges and opportunities. One of the main challenges is ensuring that infrastructure and public services keep pace with the city’s growth. This includes transportation networks, utilities, healthcare and educational facilities [ 15 ]. Urbanization in Jeddah also represents an opportunity to implement sustainable urban planning practices, including developing green spaces, enhancing public transportation and ensuring efficient use of resources.

The urbanization trend aligns with efforts to achieve economic diversification under Saudi Vision 2030. Jeddah’s growth could stimulate sectors other than oil, contributing to a more diversified and resilient economy. This includes the real estate, retail, tourism and services sectors.

4.2. Analysis of urban density and land use: trends, variations and strategic planning

In Jeddah, urban density varies throughout the city, reflecting the diversity of its history and stages of development. The central and older parts of Jeddah, such as Al Balad, are highly urbanized, characterized by a tight fabric of residential and commercial buildings with narrow streets and limited open spaces [ 16 ]. This high-density results from historical development patterns optimized to accommodate a growing population in a limited area.

In contrast, Jeddah’s suburban areas, developed more recently, show lower densities. These areas are characterized by larger residential plots and expansive commercial developments, reflecting the trend toward more spacious living spaces that meet the city’s residents’ diverse lifestyle preferences and economic capabilities [ 17 ].

Land-use patterns in Jeddah have evolved in response to rapid urban growth and changing social and economic dynamics ( Figure 5 ). Residential land use dominates, including a range of housing types from densely populated apartments downtown to single-family homes in the suburbs. There is a growing trend toward mixed-use developments that combine residential, commercial and leisure spaces within a single area or building complex [ 18 ]. This approach supports an inclusive urban experience, reducing the need for long commutes and promoting integrated community living. In addition, there is an increasing focus on including recreational and green spaces in urban planning in response to the need for sustainable urban environments and the well-being of residents. Parks, waterfront development and public plazas are increasingly being considered in urban planning.

Jeddah land use plan.

The Jeddah City Master Plan reflects a strategic approach to urban development to achieve a balanced and sustainable urban environment. One of its goals is to reduce dependence on cars by creating more walkable neighborhoods, enhancing public transportation and ensuring residents have easy access to essential services and amenities. The plan also focuses on improving the overall quality of urban life by improving physical infrastructure and ensuring that urban spaces promote social interaction, cultural expression and recreational activities.

4.3. Key structuring elements shaping the City of Jeddah

4.3.1. transportation infrastructure.

A city’s transport infrastructure is vital to its development and connectivity. The extensive network of highways and major roads, such as the Jeddah-Makkah Expressway, plays a crucial role. This network facilitates efficient movement through the city and to other areas and influences urban expansion. New developments are often observed along these major transportation corridors, reflecting the impact of these routes on the city’s growth ( Figure 6 ).

Jeddah transportation network plan.

In addition to the road network, the Haramain High-Speed ​​Train greatly enhances the city’s connectivity. The modern railway system connects Jeddah to the important religious centers of Mecca and Medina. Railway stations act as public transport-oriented development centers and become focal points for new urban development. These developments include residential, commercial and mixed-use projects, further contributing to the city’s urban landscape.

King Abdulaziz International Airport is another significant element of the city’s transportation infrastructure. Known as one of the largest and busiest airports in the region, it plays a pivotal role in international and domestic travel. Its presence not only facilitates movement but also drives economic activity. The areas surrounding the airport have witnessed significant urban development, highlighting its impact on the region’s growth and urban expansion.

4.3.2. Economic drivers

The city’s economic engines are characterized by several key elements ( Figure 7 ), including the Jeddah Islamic Port. This port, which serves as a significant maritime center, drives economic activity and dramatically influences the development of adjacent industrial and commercial areas. Its continuous expansion and modernization have played a decisive role in strengthening Jeddah’s logistics and commercial center position. This has attracted businesses, enhancing the economic status of the city [ 3 ].

Jeddah major infrastructure and economic nodes.

The role of the port is complemented by industrial zones strategically spread throughout the city. These areas are considered pivotal in contributing to the economic diversification of Jeddah. As centers of manufacturing, logistics and trade, these regions profoundly impact land use patterns and job creation. Its strategic locations facilitate efficient operations and communication, strengthening the city’s economic framework and comprehensive development path [ 19 ].

4.3.3. Natural features

The city’s natural characteristics, especially the Red Sea coast, are essential in shaping its development. The coastline is a significant asset to the city of Jeddah, impacting various residential, commercial and tourism projects. Waterfront areas along the city’s coast are highly sought for real estate development. These areas are often the sites of high-end developments, luxury resorts and diverse entertainment facilities, making them significant attractions in the city’s landscape [ 10 ].

Environmental considerations are also an integral aspect of the city’s development, especially in the context of its natural features. There is increasing recognition of the need to preserve and protect these natural elements, including marine environments and beaches [ 20 ]. Efforts are being made to balance urban development and environmental sustainability. These efforts reflect the growing awareness of the importance of environmental stewardship in urban planning and ensuring that development occurs in harmony with the surrounding natural environment.

4.3.4. Cultural and historical sites

Cultural and historical sites are essential to the city’s identity and development. The historic Al-Balad region is a prominent example of this ( Figure 8 ). Al Balad is known for its traditional architecture and cultural significance and is considered an essential element of Jeddah’s identity. Preservation efforts in this historic area serve dual purposes. It protects and preserves the city’s cultural heritage and promotes cultural tourism. This promotion of cultural tourism has a tangible impact on land use in and around the area, reflecting the importance of the area in the city’s urban landscape [ 21 ].

Historical Jeddah and UNESCO major sites.

Further emphasizing the role of culture in urban planning is the emphasis on cultural tourism throughout the city. Promoting cultural and historical sites for tourism has significant implications for urban planning and development. This involves developing and enhancing infrastructure to support tourism, such as improving accessibility and providing tourism facilities. Furthermore, integrating cultural heritage into broader urban development plans is a strategic approach, ensuring that these sites are preserved and showcased in the city’s growth and development context.

When comparing Jeddah’s urban development to similar cities, Istanbul, Cairo and Singapore are relevant benchmarks. These cities, like Jeddah, have experienced rapid urbanization, are significant cultural and economic hubs in their regions and face similar urban planning and development challenges.

Istanbul: Balancing historical preservation with modern development Istanbul exemplifies the challenge of preserving historical integrity amidst rapid urban growth. Jeddah can learn from Istanbul’s regulatory frameworks and community involvement strategies, emphasizing the importance of maintaining a city’s historical and cultural essence while accommodating modern infrastructure needs. This includes integrating innovative solutions to preserve historical sites and utilizing heritage as a lever for tourism and economic growth, without succumbing to over-commercialization.

Cairo: Addressing urban sprawl and traffic congestion Cairo’s experience with extensive urban sprawl and severe traffic congestion offers critical insights into managing these issues. Jeddah can apply Cairo’s comprehensive urban planning approaches, emphasizing the development of public transportation systems to alleviate traffic congestion. Additionally, upgrading informal settlements and ensuring inclusive development that provides equitable access to services and infrastructure are crucial lessons to ensure sustainable urban growth.

Singapore: Mastering high-density urban planning and sustainability Singapore’s highly efficient and sustainable urban planning model stands as an exemplary benchmark for Jeddah. The city-state’s strict zoning laws, commitment to green urbanism and robust public transportation infrastructure offer a blueprint for managing urban density while prioritizing environmental sustainability. Jeddah can adopt similar strategies, focusing on integrated urban development that harmonizes residential, commercial and recreational spaces with green initiatives and sustainable practices.

5.1. Strategic implementation for Jeddah

Regulatory and legal frameworks: Like Istanbul, Jeddah needs to establish strong legal and regulatory frameworks that protect its historical and cultural sites, ensuring that urban development does not erode its heritage.

Sustainable urban planning: Drawing from Singapore, Jeddah can prioritize sustainable urban planning, integrating green spaces and adopting energy-efficient building designs. This approach enhances the city’s livability and addresses environmental concerns.

Public transportation and infrastructure: Inspired by Cairo and Singapore, Jeddah should invest in developing a comprehensive public transportation system. This would reduce reliance on private vehicles, decrease traffic congestion and improve air quality.

Community engagement: Engaging local communities in the planning process, as seen in Istanbul and Cairo, ensures that development projects reflect the community’s needs and heritage. This participatory approach fosters a sense of ownership and satisfaction among residents.

Holistic development approach: Finally, adopting a holistic approach to urban development that balances economic growth with social and environmental sustainability, as Singapore exemplifies, can guide Jeddah toward a more sustainable and prosperous future.

By drawing on the experiences and strategies of Istanbul, Cairo and Singapore, Jeddah can navigate its urban development challenges more effectively, ensuring a balanced growth that respects its rich heritage while embracing modernity and sustainability.

6.1. Identification of main strategic issues in urban development

Rapid urbanization in Jeddah poses multiple challenges in housing and urban sprawl. A growing population has increased demand for housing, posing challenges to both supply and affordability. Different income levels require diverse housing options, but the rising cost of real estate makes affordability a critical issue. City sprawl often takes the form of suburban sprawl, raising concerns about sustainable land use, increased commute times, rising infrastructure costs and loss of green space. Accommodating the growing population requires adequate infrastructure and services, including utilities, healthcare, education and recreational facilities, ensuring that urban growth keeps pace.

Transportation and traffic congestion are major issues in Jeddah’s urban development. As the city grows, traffic congestion becomes a primary concern, affecting the quality of life and economic efficiency. The heavy reliance on private vehicles exacerbates this problem, highlighting the lack of a comprehensive and efficient public transportation system. Developing a robust public transport network, including buses, metro and trains, is essential to relieve traffic congestion and promote sustainable urban mobility.

Environmental sustainability and climate change are critical considerations in Jeddah’s urban planning. The city’s coastal location makes it vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, including rising sea levels and extreme weather events. It is necessary to develop climate-resilient infrastructure and coastal protection measures. Urban heat islands and air pollution are major concerns, with solutions including promoting green building practices, increasing urban green spaces and improving waste and emissions management. Efficient water resource management is vital in Jeddah’s dry climate, necessitating strategies for water conservation, desalination and recycling.

Economic diversification and employment are consistent with broader national goals, requiring Jeddah to diversify its economy beyond the oil sector. Developing tourism, manufacturing, finance and technology sectors is crucial. Creating job opportunities, especially for young people and the growing population, is essential, including encouraging entrepreneurship, supporting small and medium enterprises and attracting foreign investment. These efforts are consistent with Saudi Vision 2030, which focuses on economic diversification, innovation and sustainable development.

6.2. The impact of strategic issues on Jeddah’s future urban development

The challenges facing Jeddah will significantly impact future urban planning and infrastructure development. Integrated urban planning is needed to address housing demand, transportation and urban sprawl comprehensively. This approach involves creating master plans incorporating land use, infrastructure development and environmental considerations. Infrastructure projects must be sustainable, focusing on building resilient structures, developing efficient public transport systems and ensuring new developments are connected and well-served. Managing urban sprawl is extremely important to prevent excessive expansion of services and infrastructure while adopting policies that promote densification, especially in central areas that enjoy good services, to manage growth sustainably.

The environmental challenges facing Jeddah require a strong focus on sustainability. Implementing green building standards and practices is essential to reduce the environmental footprint of new developments, which include energy-efficient buildings, water-saving technologies and sustainable materials. Increasing renewable energy sources, such as solar energy, is critical to reducing carbon emissions and reliance on fossil fuels. Effective management of resources, including water and waste, is vital to achieving environmental sustainability, including investments in water recycling, desalination technologies and sustainable waste management practices.

Economic diversification is a crucial factor shaping urban development in Jeddah. Developing policies and infrastructure to support new and emerging industries is critical to achieving this diversification. This includes creating business-friendly environments, providing financial incentives and developing specialized economic zones. Fostering a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship can drive economic growth, including supporting startups, incubators and initiatives.

Jeddah’s urban development also carries significant social and cultural implications. It should be comprehensive, meeting residents’ diverse needs, including affordable housing, accessible public services and community spaces. Preserving Jeddah’s cultural heritage, such as the historic Al Balad district, is essential for preserving the city’s unique identity, and urban development should integrate cultural heritage preservation with modernization. Involving local communities in planning ensures that development responds to their needs and aspirations.

7.1. Strategic responses to identified issues

The city’s development strategy includes various vital areas, addressing the challenges and opportunities its growth and modernization presents. These areas include the following:

Housing and urban expansion

With the rapid pace of urbanization and increasing demand for housing, the city is focusing on developing new housing projects and urban areas. These developments emphasize affordability and sustainability, meeting the needs of a growing population. Jeddah Municipality, for example, plans to develop new residential areas. These plans are about creating residential spaces and ensuring adequate infrastructure and services support these new communities.

Transportation and traffic management

Significant investments are being made in public transport infrastructure to address traffic congestion and enhance overall mobility. Significant projects include expanding the city’s road network, essential to facilitate traffic flow. In addition, a comprehensive public transportation system is being developed, including the metro and bus network. These projects aim to provide efficient and accessible transportation options for residents.

Environmental sustainability initiatives

Addressing environmental challenges is another critical focus area. Initiatives include implementing green building standards, encouraging renewable energy sources and enhancing water and waste management systems. Projects aimed at increasing green spaces and developing coastal areas are also part of these initiatives. These efforts are necessary to maintain environmental balance and ensure sustainable urban growth.

Economic diversification and job creation

Efforts are being made to diversify the economy and reduce dependence on the oil sector. This diversification includes strengthening industries such as tourism, finance and technology. This strategy includes developing specialized economic zones, supporting startups and promoting small businesses. These measures aim to create new job opportunities, stimulate economic growth and contribute to building a strong and dynamic economy.

7.2. Models for sustainable urban development

Jeddah’s approach to sustainable urban development can be analyzed from three main perspectives: Smart City Initiatives, the Compact City Model and Green Urbanism. Each model contributes uniquely to the city’s overall sustainability and livability goals.

7.2.1. Smart City initiatives

Jeddah’s transformation into a smart city, focusing on leveraging cutting-edge technology to enhance urban life, is crucial to its urban development strategy. This reflects a commitment to innovation, efficiency and sustainability, aiming to improve its residents’ and visitors’ overall quality of life. This initiative includes the following:

The city uses advanced technologies in various sectors to streamline operations and improve service delivery. A notable example is the implementation of traffic lights and smart sensors designed to improve traffic flow and reduce congestion. These technologies are being integrated into the city’s traffic management systems to ensure smoother and more efficient transportation.

Digital governance platforms are being implemented to make municipal services more accessible to residents. These platforms allow efficient online access to various services, including bill payments, service requests and public feedback mechanisms. This shift toward electronic governance simplifies operations for residents and enhances the transparency and responsiveness of municipal services.

Deploying Internet of Things (IoT) technologies is crucial for real-time urban infrastructure monitoring. Sensors are used to monitor water and electricity use, assess the structural health of buildings and evaluate air quality. These monitoring systems enable proactive maintenance and management of city infrastructure, contributing to a more sustainable urban environment.

Jeddah embraces data analytics and artificial intelligence to improve city planning and operational efficiency. The city can make informed decisions regarding traffic patterns, urban development and resource management by analyzing data from various sources. This data-driven approach ensures that planning and development initiatives are based on accurate and up-to-date information, leading to more effective and sustainable urban solutions.

7.2.2. Compact city model

The Compact City Model adopted by Jeddah represents a strategic approach to urban planning that emphasizes the efficient use of space, enhanced urban connectivity and vibrant community interaction. This model is particularly relevant in addressing the challenges of rapid urbanization and sustainable development. It aims to create a city that is not only spatially efficient but also socially cohesive and environmentally friendly. This initiative includes the following:

The city is promoting high-density urban development to achieve more efficient use of land and resources. This approach involves developing mixed-use buildings and complexes with close residential, commercial and leisure facilities. In doing so, Jeddah aims to create more integrated and cohesive urban spaces that reduce the need for extensive travel and maximize the use of available land.

Great emphasis is placed on developing areas surrounding major public transportation hubs, such as metro stations. This transportation-oriented development is designed to encourage public transportation and reduce car reliance. By focusing development around transportation hubs, residents and workers have easier access to public transportation, thus facilitating more sustainable and efficient urban mobility.

Improving urban design to be more pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly is another crucial aspect of Jeddah’s approach. This includes creating wider sidewalks, pedestrian areas, bike paths and greenways. These features not only enhance urban esthetics but also encourage healthier and environmentally friendly modes of transportation. Improving walking and cycling infrastructure makes the city more accessible and enjoyable for residents and visitors.

Creating mixed-use neighborhoods is central to Jeddah’s vision of a compact urban form. These neighborhoods combine living, working and leisure activities, reducing the need to travel long distances. This approach fosters a stronger sense of community, encouraging interaction between residents in various aspects of their daily lives. Mixed-use neighborhoods provide a comprehensive living experience, contributing to the overall quality of life in the city.

7.2.3. Green urbanism

Green Urbanism in Jeddah emphasizes embedding sustainability and environmental responsibility in urban development. The focus is on creating a harmonious balance between urban growth and environmental preservation, ensuring the city’s and its residents’ sustainable future. This initiative includes the following:

A key aspect of this strategy is the development of urban green spaces. Jeddah focuses on creating parks, community gardens and green belts to provide recreational areas for residents. These green spaces provide areas for entertainment and relaxation and contribute to improving air quality and creating a healthier living environment. By integrating nature into the urban landscape, the city aims to enhance the overall well-being of its residents.

Sustainable building practices are encouraged to ensure new developments are environmentally friendly and resource-efficient. This involves using sustainable materials, incorporating energy-efficient designs and implementing water-saving technologies. By adopting these practices, Jeddah aims to reduce the environmental impact of its buildings and enhance sustainability in its urban fabric.

The city also focuses on climate-responsive design in its urban architecture. This approach includes designing buildings and spaces compatible with the specific climatic conditions of Jeddah. It includes improving natural lighting and ventilation and reducing energy use, thus creating comfortable, energy-efficient and environmentally friendly spaces.

The City of Jeddah is committed to preserving natural habitats and biodiversity in and around the city. This includes implementing measures to protect coastal and marine environments. Preserving these natural resources is vital to maintain the ecological balance and ensure the sustainability of the city’s development. By prioritizing environmental conservation, Jeddah is working to achieve a future in which urban growth and nature conservation go hand in hand.

Overall, sustainability initiatives collectively contribute to creating a more sustainable urban environment, reducing carbon footprint and improving resource efficiency. Enhanced livelihoods are achieved through improved transportation, green spaces and community-focused development, all of which improve the quality of life. Smart city initiatives can attract investment, foster innovation and improve economic efficiency, providing significant economic benefits. However, challenges may include the initial cost of implementing smart technologies, ensuring equitable access to these developments and striking a balance between rapid urbanization and environmental conservation.

Implementing urban development strategies in Jeddah involves intricate challenges beyond the initial planning stages. These can be broadly categorized into logistical, financial, political and social aspects, each with unique intricacies. Here is a detailed analysis of the challenges facing urban planning and development in Jeddah:

Logistical challenges: The complexity of executing large-scale urban projects cannot be overstated. This includes ensuring technological feasibility, coordinating various stakeholders and managing the disruption to daily city life. Integrating new infrastructure with existing systems requires careful planning to minimize disruptions and ensure long-term sustainability.

Financial constraints: Funding these ambitious projects is a significant hurdle. It involves securing the necessary capital and ensuring that the funds are allocated efficiently and transparently. To support these initiatives, the city may need to explore innovative financing models, such as public-private partnerships.

Political dynamics: The alignment of urban development with national policies is crucial. This requires navigating political landscapes, managing stakeholder interests and ensuring continuous support from various levels of government. The success of these projects often hinges on political will and stability.

Social and cultural factors: Gaining public support and addressing the concerns of local communities is paramount. This involves inclusive planning processes that consider the diverse socio-cultural fabric of Jeddah. Key considerations include preserving cultural heritage while promoting modernization and ensuring equitable development that benefits all segments of society.

Environmental considerations: Jeddah’s urban planning must also address environmental sustainability. This includes managing natural resources wisely, reducing carbon footprints and ensuring that urban expansion does not come at the cost of environmental degradation.

Adaptive planning: Finally, the ability to adapt to unforeseen challenges, whether they are economic fluctuations, technological advancements or social changes, is critical. An adaptive approach to urban planning, which allows for flexibility and responsiveness, is necessary in a rapidly evolving urban landscape like Jeddah.

In conclusion, addressing these challenges requires a multifaceted approach that combines strategic planning with practical, on-ground solutions. It demands collaboration across different sectors, transparency in governance and a commitment to inclusive and sustainable development.

The recommendations to address urban development in Jeddah are multifaceted, covering spatial planning, institutional strengthening, legal frameworks and financial strategies. These recommendations aim to create a sustainable and balanced urban ecosystem.

Effective management of urban sprawl is essential. Urban growth limits can help control sprawl and encourage densification, leading to more efficient land use. Incorporating green spaces and ensuring a mix of residential, commercial and recreational land uses is vital to creating a balanced and livable urban environment. This approach not only promotes efficient land use but also enhances the quality of life for residents.

Strengthening local government institutions, especially the Jeddah Municipality, is crucial. Capacity building within these institutions will ensure they have the resources and skills to manage urban development effectively. This involves enhancing their ability to plan, implement and manage urban development projects and policies.

The legal framework, including zoning laws and building codes, needs to be updated to reflect the needs of a modern, sustainable city. Regulations should be geared toward sustainable practices, such as green buildings and efficient use of resources. This will support environmental sustainability and encourage developers and citizens to adopt more sustainable practices.

Leveraging public-private partnerships is a critical financial strategy. This approach could attract investment and expertise for infrastructure projects and urban services, reduce the financial burden on the public sector, and, at the same time, enhance innovation and efficiency. Diversifying revenue sources, such as property taxes or urban service fees, can provide sustainable infrastructure and financing for public services. In addition, investing in sustainable infrastructure projects such as renewable energy, public transportation and water conservation is crucial. These investments meet current needs while ensuring the long-term sustainability and resilience of the city.

The concluding remarks on the urban future of Jeddah and its alignment with Saudi Vision 2030 highlight the focus on urban resilience and sustainability. Future urban development in Jeddah should address environmental challenges and ensure a high quality of life for residents, in line with Saudi Vision 2030’s focus on sustainable living environments. Supporting economic diversification and innovation is vital to Jeddah’s future, as sectors such as technology, tourism and finance are strengthened to drive economic growth and job creation. Ensuring social inclusion and cultural preservation in urban development is vital, including community engagement and preservation of historical sites. Urban development in Jeddah must align with the broader goals of Saudi Vision 2030, which aims at economic diversification, sustainable development, improving quality of life, integrating advanced technologies, promoting environmental sustainability and ensuring economic stability. Top of Form.

Haytham Alhubashi (Investigation [equal], Writing—original draft [equal]), Mohammed Alamoudi (Data curation [equal], Formal analysis [equal], Funding acquisition [equal], Writing—original draft [equal]), Ayman Imam (Methodology [equal], Resources [equal]), Ahmad Abed (Resources [equal], Validation [equal], Visualization [equal]), Ibrahim Hegazy (Conceptualization [equal], Project administration [equal], Validation [equal], Writing—review and editing [equal]).

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Aldegheishem A . Urban growth Management in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: an assessment of technical policy instruments and institutional practices . Sustain For 2023 ; 15 : 10616 . https://doi.org/10.3390/su151310616 .

Waheeb SA . Environmental and cultural sustainability of the architectural elements of two historical mosques in historic Jeddah . J Umm Al-Qura Univ Eng Arch 2023 ; 14 : 26 – 35 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s43995-022-00011-z .

Zaki SK , Hegazy IR . Investigating the challenges and opportunities for sustainable waterfront development in Jeddah City . Int J Low Carbon Technol 2023 ; 18 : 809 – 19 . https://doi.org/10.1093/ijlct/ctad062 .

Mubarak FA . Urban growth boundary policy and residential suburbanization: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia . Habitat Int 2004 ; 28 : 567 – 91 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2003.10.010 .

Helmi M . The Ability of the Local Planning Authority to Implement Zoning Regulations: A Case Study of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia . Doctoral dissertation . Newcastle University , 2015 . https://drepo.sdl.edu.sa/handle/20.500.14154/51691 .

Aljehani L . The impact of the Haramain high-speed train on land prices and urban growth in the neighborhoods of Tibah municipality, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia . Curr Urban Stud 2023 ; 11 : 415 – 46 . https://doi.org/10.4236/cus.2023.113023 .

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Cornell has long been a global leader in international development economics research, teaching, and outreach. Cornell was the main academic incubator of Asia’s Green Revolution and developed the world’s main poverty and food insecurity measures, along with other seminal theories, methods, and empirical findings. CIDER sustains that tradition, fostering collaborations among Cornell faculty, staff, students, and external partners worldwide by working to reduce poverty, hunger, and human suffering.

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Mixed efforts to achieve energy goals highlighted at the end of Sustainability Week

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The President of the UN General Assembly called for the acknowledgement of mixed efforts to achieve the goals of the Decade of Sustainable Energy , as the UN’s first ever Sustainability Week drew to a close on Friday.  

The unanimous declaration of the Decade of Sustainable Energy for All in 2012 aimed to hone on the importance of improving “access to reliable, affordable, economically viable, socially acceptable and environmentally sound energy services and resources for sustainable development.” 

Dennis Francis said there have been both achievements and shortcomings in meeting the goal throughout the decade.

He noted that developing countries experienced a 9.6 per cent annual growth in renewable energy installation and the global population with access to electricity has increased from 87 per cent to 91 per cent since 2015. 

Yet, he said, “ the pace of energy transformations is still much too slow – and the benefits are not shared equitably. ” 

‘Business as usual cannot be a credible option’ 

Mr. Francis said urgent action needs to be taken to address these sustainability issues, especially since more than 73 million people in least-developed countries continue to remain without electricity. 

“We must truly deliver to all people, universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy, while substantially increasing the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix by 2030,” he said.  

He also stressed actively trying to make renewable energy three times more widespread worldwide and doubling how much energy we save each year. 

Most important, he said, is rectifying, “... the stark moral failure evident in the fact that billions still live without adequate energy, or any energy at all, while others are reportedly planning lunar vacations being offered commercially. ” 

Meeting the goal 

Mr. Francis suggested three ways of meeting their goals – money, making use of resources, and international cooperation.  

He said trillions of dollars are needed to accelerate the energy transitions and avoid the impacts of climate change. Next, he said, governments, the private sectors, civil society and more need to work together to source innovations and propel action. And finally, international cooperation “ must continue to be the standard bearer for our efforts. ” 

Sustainability Week discussions 

During the week, ministers and dignitaries spent time reflecting on the role of energy in tourism , transport and infrastructure .  

As the week went by, the Assembly President called for equal access to sustainable transportation, especially in vulnerable communities; a global tourism sector with “ deep local value chains that expand demand for locally made products and services ,” and for “ quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure ,” that will make populations safer against natural hazards and sustain trade and commerce, among other things. 

Decade of Sustainable Energy 

Though the Decade of Sustainable Energy draws to a close this year, the Assembly President is encouraging member states, private sectors and other stakeholders to “further advance international cooperation” to recommit delivering on goals.  

“If we are to accomplish our goals and targets by 2030, we must make every effort to sustain this political momentum after the Decade officially concludes,” he said. 

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Sustainable Energy & Fuels

Design and development of nanostructured photocatalysts for large-scale solar green hydrogen generation.

* Corresponding authors

a Department of Chemistry, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan Deemed to be University Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India E-mail: [email protected] , [email protected]

The production of clean hydrogen through artificial photosynthesis is the most intriguing research topic that offers hope for meeting the world's energy demands. The evolution of green hydrogen via visible light-driven photocatalysis is challenging but feasible. Photocatalytic solar power systems primarily rely on utilizing the complete range of solar spectrum. The synthesis of an optimal photocatalyst should address all the influencing parameters with an efficient scaling method, which remains yet to be elucidated despite several advancements in photocatalytic water-splitting applications. Real-time solutions are necessary to overcome the lack of photocatalytic efficacy of semiconducting nanomaterials in solar-powered systems. In addition to the proposal of designing solar-powered systems for hydrogen generation, this review paves the way for highlighting the difficulties associated with water reduction methods. It also offers some strategies to improve charge separation and migration in a semiconducting photocatalyst by enhancing light absorption and altering their band positions. Moreover, a cost-effective, eco-friendly, and photostable heterogeneous nanocatalyst must be designed for visible light-harvesting water-splitting processes. This article reports various nanomaterial-based photocatalysts, which act as the base surface for photocatalytic solar water splitting. These include oxides, chalcogenides, and nitrides of metals, noble metals, plasmonic metals, ultrathin 2D covalent–organic frameworks (COFs), metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), and metal-free polymeric graphitic carbon nitrides. The integration of multi-component nano-materials can be more appropriate than single-component photocatalysts to maximize their catalytic activity. Thin-film photocatalysis is considered the most effective method for increasing hydrogen production rates compared to powder suspension-based photocatalysis. This article presents the latest advancements in thin film-based photocatalytic technology, outlining all the critical factors, prerequisites, and techniques for thin film preparation. Future research on advanced photocatalysis focuses on harvesting green hydrogen for in situ carbon dioxide reduction, fine chemical synthesis, nitrogen fixation, and hydrogen peroxide synthesis. Experimentally, photocatalytic solar-powered systems utilize natural sun light. However, the synthesis of ideal photocatalysts via effective scaling approaches remains a challenge. This paper paves the way for finding solutions and designing a practical solar-powered system for green hydrogen production.

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• Published: 14 February 2023
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Implementing sustainability in academic research

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In 2015, the United Nations have established 17 Sustainable Development Goals, with the aim to end poverty and other deprivations, improve health and education, reduce inequality and spur economic growth, while tackling climate change and preserving our oceans and forests. Bioengineering research can contribute to achieving these goals, not only by engineering platforms and tools to improve human health and address environmental issues, but, importantly, by making academic research more sustainable. Now, writing in the Journal of Controlled Release , Gregor Fuhrmann outlines several strategies to implement sustainable approaches in bioengineering research.

“We should test the way we do research against the background of sustainability,” explains Fuhrmann. “Do we train young scientists to think and act in a sustainable manner and thus take responsible decisions? Are we running our daily lab work in a sustainable manner, for example, by reducing waste and by using recyclable reagents and glassware? Are we developing solutions for actual clinical needs? Are these solutions sustainable, both in terms of resources and application?”

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Original article

Fuhrmann, G. Drug delivery as a sustainable avenue to future therapies. J. Contr. Release https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jconrel.2023.01.045 (2023)

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Horejs, CM. Implementing sustainability in academic research. Nat Rev Bioeng 1 , 160 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44222-023-00043-7

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Published : 14 February 2023

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s44222-023-00043-7

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