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1 – 4 of 4Sarfo Mensah, Collins Ameyaw and William Appiah Yeboah
The lack of carbon emission reduction strategies specifically devised for buildings in urban areas in developing countries has affected the global course of tackling carbon…
Abstract
Purpose
The lack of carbon emission reduction strategies specifically devised for buildings in urban areas in developing countries has affected the global course of tackling carbon emissions. The purpose of this study is to identify the causes of carbon emissions from buildings in urban settings in Ghana and generate specific reduction strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was conducted with reference to Kumasi Metropolis, an urban area in Ghana. Adopting a survey research design, data obtained from 106 built environment professionals (BEP) were analyzed using Garrett’s mean ranking and factor analysis (FA) techniques.
Findings
Urban buildings’ carbon emissions in the study area are attributable to construction, demolition energy consumption, technological and economic factors. The strategies emerging from the study emphasize organizational and governmental policy and regulatory factors, as well as the adoption of indigenous sustainable materials and technology.
Practical implications
BEPs and construction industry regulatory bodies will have to consider socioeconomic characteristics of a specific location in the development of organizational and localized carbon emission reduction policies.
Social implications
Local authorities who plan economic activities such as trading and associated taxation in urban areas in developing countries should consider the climate change implications of such socioeconomic activities.
Originality/value
This is one of the first studies that has conceived carbon emission causes and reduction strategies within the context of a typical developing country’s urban setting to overcome the pragmatic challenges associated with past carbon emission reduction frameworks.
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Paul Adjei Kwakwa, Hamdiyah Alhassan and William Adzawla
Quality environment is argued to be essential for ensuring food security. The effect of environmental degradation on agriculture has thus gained the attention of researchers…
Abstract
Purpose
Quality environment is argued to be essential for ensuring food security. The effect of environmental degradation on agriculture has thus gained the attention of researchers. However, the analyses of aggregate and sectoral effect of carbon dioxide emissions on agricultural development are limited in the literature. Consequently, this study examines the effect of aggregate and sectoral carbon emissions on Ghana's agricultural development.
Design/methodology/approach
Time-series data from 1971 to 2017 are employed for the study. Regression analysis and a variance decomposition analysis are employed in the study.
Findings
The results show that the country's agricultural development is negatively affected by aggregate carbon emission while financial development, labour and capital increases agricultural development. Further, industrial development and emissions from transport sector, industrial sector and other sectors adversely affect Ghana's agriculture development. The contribution of carbon emission together with other explanatory variables to the changes in agricultural development generally increases over the period.
Originality/value
This study analyses the aggregate and sectoral carbon dioxide emission effect on Ghana's agricultural development.
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Nazirah Zainul Abidin, Nor'Aini Yusof and Ayman A.E. Othman
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the enablers of creating a viable environment for a sustainable housing industry and investigate the barriers limiting this progress.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the enablers of creating a viable environment for a sustainable housing industry and investigate the barriers limiting this progress.
Design/methodology/approach
A literature review is carried out to explore the four‐angle enablers (technological, institutional, internal action and market influence) which are crucial to create an industry which is prone towards sustainable construction. Based on the interviews and surveys conducted on Malaysian developers, the findings point to various challenges for each enabler.
Findings
The paper highlighted that the government's lack of incentive programmes and the slow progress in revising related regulations are major hindrances for institutional enablers. For technological aspects, the problem lies in the cost of importing products because of the lack of locally‐produced green technology. The cost factor and lack of “urgency” are the core problems in encouraging internal action, while the low demand by the potential buyers affects market influence.
Originality/value
Actions towards transforming the conventional industry into a sustainable one require resolute actions and drive from various parties. This paper provides an insight into the key enablers for a sustainable housing industry and the current problems associated with each enabler. Although the research was carried out in Malaysia, the results may be applicable to other countries as well.
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Annie Isabel Fukushima, Kwynn Gonzalez-Pons, Lindsay Gezinski and Lauren Clark
The purpose of this study is to contribute to the social understanding of stigma as a societal and cultural barrier in the life of a survivor of human trafficking. The findings…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to contribute to the social understanding of stigma as a societal and cultural barrier in the life of a survivor of human trafficking. The findings illustrate several ways where stigma is internal, interpersonal and societal and impacts survivors’ lives, including the care they receive.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used qualitative methods. Data collection occurred during 2018 with efforts such as an online survey (n = 45), focus groups (two focus groups of seven participants each) and phone interviews (n = 6). This study used thematic analysis of qualitative data.
Findings
The research team found that a multiplicity of stigma occurred for the survivors of human trafficking, where stigma occurred across three levels from micro to meso to macro contexts. Using interpretive analysis, the researchers conceptualized how stigma is not singular; rather, it comprises the following: bias in access to care; barriers of shaming, shunning and othering; misidentification and mislabeling; multiple levels of furthering how survivors are deeply misunderstood and a culture of mistrust.
Research limitations/implications
While this study was conducted in a single US city, it provides an opportunity to create dialogue and appeal for more research that will contend with a lens of seeing a multiplicity of stigma regardless of the political climate of the context. It was a challenge to recruit survivors to participate in the study. However, survivor voices are present in this study and the impetus of the study’s focus was informed by survivors themselves. Finally, this study is informed by the perspectives of researchers who are not survivors; moreover, collaborating with survivor researchers at the local level was impossible because there were no known survivor researchers available to the team.
Practical implications
There are clinical responses to the narratives of stigma that impact survivors’ lives, but anti-trafficking response must move beyond individualized expectations to include macro responses that diminish multiple stigmas. The multiplicity in stigmas has meant that, in practice, survivors are invisible at all levels of response from micro, meso to macro contexts. Therefore, this study offers recommendations for how anti-trafficking responders may move beyond a culture of stigma towards a response that addresses how stigma occurs in micro, meso and macro contexts.
Social implications
The social implications of examining stigma as a multiplicity is central to addressing how stigma continues to be an unresolved issue in anti-trafficking response. Advancing the dynamic needs of survivors both in policy and practice necessitates responding to the multiple and overlapping forms of stigma they face in enduring and exiting exploitative conditions, accessing services and integrating back into the community.
Originality/value
This study offers original analysis of how stigma manifested for the survivors of human trafficking. Building on this dynamic genealogy of scholarship on stigma, this study offers a theory to conceptualize how survivors of human trafficking experience stigma: a multiplicity of stigma. A multiplicity of stigma extends existing research on stigma and human trafficking as occurring across three levels from micro, meso to macro contexts and creating a system of oppression. Stigma cannot be reduced to a singular form; therefore, this study argues that survivors cannot be understood as experiencing a singular form of stigma.
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