Public Administration
This sector includes activities of a governmental nature, normally carried out by the public administration. This includes the enactment and judicial interpretation of laws and regulation, as well as the administration of programmes based on them, such as legislative activities, taxation, national defence, public order and safety, immigration services, foreign affairs and the administration of government programmes. This sector also includes social security activities.
The legal or institutional status is not, by itself, the determining factor for an activity to belong in this section. This means that activities may not fall under this sector even if they are carried out by public entities. For example, the administration of the school system (i.e. regulations, checks, curricula) is in this sector, but teaching itself is not. Some activities in this sector may also be carried out by non-government units (adapted from International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC), Revision 4, Part 3, Section O).
Water management
Water management requires policies and rules related to the planning, development, distribution and management of water resources for optimal use. It is forecast that by 2050 the Earth will have to feed and provide energy for 2–2.5 billion more people (Cosgrove & Loucks, 2015). To meet the nutritional needs of this additional population, we need to consider the amount of water that is consumed in the production of different goods, energy and food. Considering the increase in population and demand for drinking water, irrigation, agriculture, sanitation, and due to droughts, managing water resources constitute an important aspect for the sustainability of our planet.
Water politics
Quality of life and economic indicators
An important part of economic development practice is to improve people's quality of life. Business activities create jobs, which create income, which creates wealth, which raises people's quality of life. This in turn attracts more business activities, which in turn create jobs and so on, in an economic development cycle (Quality of Life in Economic Development, 2017). The ability to generate and sustain inclusive wealth and a decent standard of life for all citizens in our globalized world of competing economies, depends on five key elements that interact and influence each other. These are: natural capital, social capital, resource management, intellectual capital and governance efficiency (Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index 2017, 2017).
Quality of life in economic development and the case of Hong Kong “from an expat point of view”
Environmental justice and law
Environmental law, also known as environmental and natural resources law, is a collective term used to describe the network of treaties, statutes, regulations, common and customary laws that address the effects of human activity on the natural environment. The core environmental laws focus on environmental pollution. A related, but distinct set of regulatory regimes now strongly influenced by environmental legal principles, focuses on the management of specific natural resources, such as forests, minerals or fisheries (LegalSutra, 2017).
How the carbon trading scheme worked in China
Carbon cycle and climate change / global warming
Carbon is the building block of life. It is the basic element of all organic substances, from fossil fuel to DNA. Most of the Earth’s carbon—about 65,500 billion metric tons—is stored in rocks. The rest is in the ocean, atmosphere, plants, soil and fossil fuels. Carbon can move from one of these realms to another as a part of the carbon cycle. Over the long term, the carbon cycle seems to maintain a balance that helps keep Earth’s temperature relatively stable. Today, human activities,such as burning fossil fuels and clearing forests (that store carbon) have brought changes to the carbon cycle by emitting huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere that cause an increase in global temperatures.
Reduction in CO2 emission in Sweden
Sustainable development
There are many different definitions of sustainable development. One of the most common definitions is from Our Common Future (1987). It refers to sustainable development as the type of development that 'meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'. The goal of sustainable development is to strike a balance between the needs of the environment, society and economy in order to maintain a decent standard of life for both present and future generations.
