Urban-rural linkages: effective solutions for achieving sustainable development in Ghana from an SDG interlinkage perspective

Antimalarial stocking decisions among medicine retailers in Ghana: implications for quality management and control of malaria

Global health efforts such as malarial control require efficient pharmaceutical supply chains to ensure effective delivery of quality-assured medicines to those who need them. However, very little is currently known about decision-making processes within antimalarial supply chains and potential vulnerabilities to substandard and falsified medicines. Addressing this gap, we report on a study that investigated decision-making around the stocking of antimalarial products among private-sector medicine retailers in Ghana. Licensed retail pharmacies and over-the-counter (OTC) medicine retail outlets were sampled across six regions of Ghana using a two-stage stratified sampling procedure, with antimalarial medicines categorised as 'expensive,' 'mid-range,' and 'cheaper,' relative to other products in the shop. Retailers were asked about their motivations for choosing to stock particular products over others. The reasons were grouped into three categories: financial, reputation/experience and professional recommendation. Reputation/experience (76%, 95% CI 72.0% to 80.7%) were the drivers of antimalarial stocking decisions, followed by financial reasons (53.2%, 95% CI 48.1% to 58.3%) and recommendation by certified health professionals (24.7%, 95% CI 20.3% to 29.1%). Financial considerations were particularly influential in stocking decisions of cheaper medicines. Moreover, pharmacies and OTCs without a qualified pharmacist were significantly more likely to indicate financial reasons as a motivation for stocking decisions. No significant differences in stocking decisions were found by geographical location (zone and urban/rural) or outlet (pharmacy/OTC). These findings have implications for the management of antimalarial quality across supply chains in Ghana, with potentially important consequences for malaria control, particularly in lower-income areas where people rely on low-cost medication.

Evaluation and development strategy of urban-rural integration under ecological protection in the Yellow River Basin, China

The problem of imbalanced urban-rural development in China is becoming increasingly serious. Urban-rural integration (URI) is an inevitable way to narrow the urban-rural gap and promote rural development. The Yellow River Basin (YRB) is an important barrier to China's ecological security and plays a crucial role in promoting ecological protection and in high-quality development strategies. Therefore, this article constructs an evaluation index system for URI from five dimensions: economic integration, social integration, ecological integration, element integration, and spatial integration. The simulated annealing-projection pursuit model and time degree are used to analyze the dynamic urban-rural integration level (URIL) of 373 counties from 2000 to 2019. Building upon this foundation, this study classifies four types of URI zones and proposes development strategies tailored to each zone. The results indicate (1) that the URIL in the YRB continues to increase, and that there has been a significant increase in high-level integration areas since 2010. (2) The URIL exhibits a distinct spatial clustering pattern, characterized by lower levels in the upper reaches, and higher levels in the middle and lower reaches. (3) There exists a spatial disparity between economic development and the ecological environment, and it is particularly noticeable in the lower reaches regions. These results contribute to a better understanding of URI in the YRB and provide a reference for the sustainable development of URI in various regions.

Education for sustainable development in rural communities: Parents' perceptions of children's willingness‐to‐study and learning difficulties associated with school transport in Ukerewe Island, Tanzania

Quality education and school transport are prerequisites for children to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs), but they are disproportionately inadequate in rural communities. This study explores 350 parents' perceptions of the willingness‐to‐study (WTS) and learning difficulties of schoolchildren in Ukerewe Island (Tanzania) based on the mode of transport. The study surveyed 17 rural islands to build structural equation models based on Health Belief Model. The results showed that schoolchildren in Ukerewe Island have learning difficulties caused by the quality of their mode of transport to and from school. The children's learning difficulties were positively associated with perceived severity, self‐efficacy, and vulnerability. The perceived benefits of canoe transport supported the WTS. However, WTS could not buffer learning difficulties. Interestingly, male and female caregivers differ regarding the perceived WTS and their children's learning difficulties. This study contributes mitigation measures relevant to education and transport planning toward realizing SDGs 3, 4, and 10.

SDGs-oriented evaluation of the sustainability of rural human settlement environment in Zhejiang, China

Sustainable development of rural has become an essential global plan. Habitat sustainability assessment of rural is a critical management tool to grasp the development status of rural in real-time and enable dynamic adjustment of policies. This paper combines the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the entropy weight method, TOPSIS, and grey correlation analysis to construct a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) evaluation model, which is finally used to assess the sustainability of the rural human settlement environment. Finally, this paper uses the rural of 11 prefecture-level cities in Zhejiang Province in 2021 as a case study for rural human settlement environment sustainability evaluation. The results show that the overall rural human settlement environment sustainability level in Zhejiang Province is better than in most regions in China. Hangzhou has the best rural human settlement environment sustainability, and Zhoushan has the worst. In addition, the production environment factor is the critical factor that constrains sustainability. The study results provide references and guidance to policymakers for sustainable development initiatives.

Assessment on the Urbanization Quality of China’s Main Grain-Producing Areas under the SDGs

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015 guide the important direction of high-quality urbanization in China’s main grain-producing areas (MGPAs), and improving the quality of urbanization is also crucial to achieve the SDGs. China’s MGPAs not only undertake the task of promoting urbanization but also of ensuring food security. The establishment of an index system based on SDGs can more effectively measure the urbanization quality of MGPAs. For the specific targets of the SDGs, this study established two sets of multidimensional indicator systems, whether including the goals of food and agriculture, and tracked the progress toward improving urbanization quality of China’s MGPAs, including 128 prefecture-level cities, during 2010–2018. We found that the comprehensive urbanization quality and the index of economic efficiency, urbanization level, and environmental quality showed an upward trend with significant regional differences and spatial agglomeration distributions, but the level of agricultural development and urban–rural co-ordination have declined in recent years; the ranking and distribution of urbanization quality, including agricultural development, varied significantly, and the number of cities belonging to the good co-ordination mode decreased as some cities changed to a lower level; and urbanization that does not sacrifice the agricultural capabilities of MGPAs could improve urbanization quality and implement the SDGs.

Water Value Integrated Approach: A Systematic Literature Review

Extreme water incidents point out a value conflict surrounding the resource. While drought and floods echo the inadequate land and resource uses, the increase in social inequalities exposes the practical, physiological, and social consequences. The multiple value action throughout the water cycle also narrowed disputes to those that neglect its vital importance, and the constraints imposed to the services, such as low tariffs, and lack of local engagement, make sustainable water systems more difficult. This article develops a systematic literature review to understand the academic motivations surrounding water value and gaps in its systematic approach. A sample with 84 papers is created by an interactive keyword selection and its general characteristics are presented. A dynamic reading technique extracts data and classifies the papers according to 14 research motivations, where the water multifunctionality and the user value stand out. The bibliographic coupling analysis identifies a cluster of 16 papers related to integration and connected to planning, decision, and management. There is a lack of contribution with a systemic approach to water resources by way of integrating actors and values, such as including local contexts.

Region-income-based prioritisation of Sustainable Development Goals by Gradient Boosting Machine

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) seek to address complex global challenges and cover aspects of social development, environmental protection, and economic growth. However, the holistic and complicated nature of the goals has made their attainment difficult. Achieving all goals by 2030 given countries' limited budgets with the economic and social disruption that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused is over-optimistic. To have the most profound impact on the SDGs achievement, prioritising and improving co-beneficial goals is an effective solution. This study confirms that countries' geographic location and income level have a significant relationship with overall SDGs achievement. This article applies the Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM) algorithm to identify the top five SDGs that drive the overall SDG score. The results show that the influential SDGs vary for countries with a specific income level located in different regions. In Europe and Central Asia, SDG10 is among the most influential goals for high-income countries, SDG9 for upper-middle-income, SDG3 in low and lower-middle-income countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, and SDG5 in Latin America and the Caribbean upper-middle-income countries. This systematic and exploratory data-driven study generates new insights that confirm the uniqueness, and non-linearity of the relationship between goals and overall SDGs achievement.

System-level consequences of synergies and trade-offs between SDGs: quantitative analysis of interlinkage networks at country level

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present a complex system of 17 goals and 169 individual targets whose interactions can be described in terms of co-benefits and trade-offs between policy actions. We analyse in detail target-by-target interlinkage networks established by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) SDG Interlinkages Tool. We discuss two quantitative measures of network structure; the leading eigenvector of the interlinkage networks ('eigencentrality') and a notion of hierarchy within the network motivated by the concept of trophic levels for species in food webs. We use three interlinkage matrices generated by IGES: the framework matrix which provides a generic network model of the interlinkages at the target level, and two country-specific matrices for Bangladesh and Indonesia that combine SDG indicator data with the generic framework matrix. Our results echo, and are confirmed by, similar work at the level of whole SDGs that has shown that SDGs 1-3 (ending poverty, and providing food security and healthcare) are much more likely to be achieved than the environmentally- related SDGs 13-15 concerned with climate action, life on land and life below water. Our results here provide a refinement in terms of specific targets within each of these SDGs. We find that not all targets within SDGs 1-3 are equally well-supported, and not all targets within SDGs 13-15 are equally at risk of not being achieved. Finally, we point to the recurring issue of data gaps that hinders our quantitative analysis, in particular for SDGs 5 (gender equality) and 13 (climate action) where the huge gaps in indicator data that mean the true nature of the interlinkages and importance of these two SDGs are not fully recognised.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11625-022-01109-y.

Emergy-Based Evaluation on the Systemic Sustainability of Rural Ecosystem under China Poverty Alleviation and Rural Revitalization: A Case of the Village in North China

A number of new rural management models have emerged to solve the problems of economic backwardness, insufficient resource utilization, and technical shortages in rural areas in the context of poverty alleviation to the rural revitalization strategy in China. However, the influence of new rural management model under all countermeasures for rural sustainable development with a comprehensive perspective is lacking. Therefore, exploring whether the new rural management model meets the requirements of sustainable development is an urgent issue. From the theory of system metabolism and emergy accounting method, this study classified the government funds for poverty alleviation measures as import resources, and analyzed the metabolic structure, efficiency, and the rural development factors of Chehe Village before and after poverty alleviation measures are carried out (the year of 2012 and 2019) to verify whether the new model was sustainable. According to the results of this study, the new management model of Chehe Village declined the rural system sustainability with the emergy sustainability index decreasing from 1.96 in 2012 to 0.32 in 2019. With the development of economy, the system metabolic efficiency of Chehe Village promoted and the metabolic structure became more reasonable manifesting in the decline of emergy use per unit GDP and the increase of emergy exchange rate. Moreover, production and livelihood had been highly valued in Chehe Village. In conclusion, it is feasible to add countermeasures of poverty alleviation and rural revitalization into the village system metabolism. The new management model of Chehe Village needs to change exogenous force into endogenous force to meet the requirements of rural sustainable development.