A major advantage of agroforestry systems is its ability to enhance soil health. Rubber and oil palm are typically cultivated in monocultures and are considered economically volatile crops. Integrating these two crops may help strengthen farmers’ resilience. This study examined a seven-year-old, innovative rubber–oil palm agroforestry system in Indonesia. Using the Biofunctool® set of indicators, the spatial heterogeneity of soil health was assessed across five distinct positions within the plot. Of the eleven indicators measured, three showed significant variation by position, which could be directly linked to specific management practices. Soil mesofauna activity was higher in less disturbed areas where cover crops were established, while nitrate dynamics was greater in zones where fertilization was applied. Infiltration rates were reduced in the rubber harvesting path, likely due to compaction from repeated walk. Most other indicators showed little variation across the plot, possibly due to the young age of the experiment and the intensive soil disturbance commonly associated with the establishment of perennial crops such as rubber and oil palm. This study provides practical recommendations for improving soil health in innovative agroforestry systems mixing rubber and oil palm. Further research incorporating agronomic and economic evaluations is needed to fully assess the system’s performance and scalability.

Greenwashing poses a significant challenge to the fight against climate change by undermining trust in corporate sustainability claims. This study introduced the greenwashing tendency score (GTS), an automatable method designed to detect greenwashing tendencies in corporate sustainability reports. By leveraging textual sentiment and alignment analysis techniques in conjunction with environmental, social, and governance ratings, the GTS quantifies discrepancies between communicated and actual sustainability performance. We applied our methodology to 36 German stock index companies during the years from 2020 to 2022. Our key findings reveal substantial variations in greenwashing tendencies among these companies, emphasizing the need for more transparent and reliable sustainability reporting. The GTS emerged as a scalable, reproducible, and objective tool that can aid, for example, investors, regulators, and Non-government organizations in identifying greenwashing practices. This research contributed to the sustainable finance literature by introducing a neutral and open measure to assess firms’ greenwashing tendency, summarizing implications for policymaking and regulatory authorities and discussing its potential for long-term accountability and integrity in corporate sustainability communications.

Instead of following an “end-of-life” concept, the circular economy focuses on reducing, or alternatively reusing, recycling, and recovering materials in production, distribution, and consumption processes. Despite its potential to contribute to organizational environmental sustainability goals, there is much uncertainty about how the circular economy can be effectively implemented. So far, industrial and organizational (I-O) psychological science and practice have largely neglected how factors such as employee attitudes and motivation, teamwork, leadership behavior, and work design may contribute to the implementation of circular economy practices. Accordingly, the aim of this focal article is to outline how expertise from I-O psychology could be used for effective circular economy implementation. To achieve this goal, we first briefly summarize the history and current practices of the circular economy. Second, we expand the current understanding of the circular economy by adding an I-O psychology perspective. Third, we link the circular economy to other relevant topics in I-O psychology, such as corporate social responsibility and employee green behavior. Finally, we outline how I-O psychologists could address one of the major challenges in the circular economy transformation: intra- and interorganizational cooperation within and across the circular value chain.

This article reconsiders late Qing state building through the underexamined lens of ecological governance, moving beyond teleological narratives of imperial decline to reassess the regime’s resilience and institutional adaptability under conditions of mounting environmental, fiscal, and geopolitical strain. Drawing on a transregional synthesis of ecological, social, political, and economic historiography, it argues that the crises confronting the Qing in the nineteenth century stemmed less from institutional stagnation or state decay than from a profound mismatch between inherited governing capacities and intensifying socio-ecological pressures generated by population growth, commercialization, and environmental degradation. Employing R. Bin Wong’s analytical framework of Challenges, Capacities, Commitments, and Claims, the article traces how the Qing state recalibrated its governing priorities in response to these challenges and constraints. Through six case studies spanning agrarian cores and imperial borderlands, it shows how ecological governance took multiple, regionally differentiated forms. Across these settings, the state selectively retreated from labour-intensive, resource-consuming paternalistic commitments while expanding extractive, coercive, and territorial strategies aimed at dynastic survival. Rather than signalling simple state decline, these uneven and survival-oriented adaptations constituted a process of governing recalibration shaped by negotiation among state authorities, local actors, and non-human forces such as water, soil, and forests. By foregrounding the agency of ecological dynamics, this article situates the late Qing within broader debates on empire, sustainability, and state capacity, offering a comparative framework for understanding how premodern and modern states confronted environmental limits in moments of systemic crisis.

Protecting biodiversity on the planet through business involvement is a priority for many governments and citizens. To do this requires balancing different social, financial, and ecological objectives with economic output. This editorial questions what is the right way to do this based on considering different forms of capital, such as natural, human, social, manufactured, and financial. This enables renewed interest in the natural environment in terms of business involvement in issues such as climate change and the circular economy.

Education policy is always at risk of working at cross-purposes toward education goals. Using a meta-ethnographic methodology and Massey’s geometry of space theory, the present article addresses this in relation to a particular policy realisation problem of teaching for sustainability in schools in depopulated rural areas with identified population challenges. Specific attention has gone to research addressing the enacted curriculum and teachers’ experiences of working with sustainability goals. The results highlight features for goal realisation such as the presence of and attention to rural natural and cultural environmental heritage, having local access and giving curriculum attention to local employment and sustainable vocations and professions, and having community support from the local community and engagement of the school in the community. Working against sustainability were global epistemic rural marginalisation, performative curriculum relations, market competition and competitive exclusions from market participation, tepid community involvement in schools, and socially isolated schools insulated from the local community.

Transitioning to a sustainable economy requires firms to transform their business models in accordance with circular economy principles. Circular economy scholarship has predominantly examined resource-rich large firms and circular startups, leaving established, resource-constrained small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) underexplored. Facing capability constraints regarding resources, knowledge, and organizational capacity, government policy intervention plays an important role. Through interviews with 15 experts and analysis of seven government programs, we reveal the transition dynamics that shape SME circular engagement and how government intervention can reinforce the optimization of linear business models or facilitate moving toward circular business model transformation.

The rise of Generative AI has accelerated the shift toward Industry 5.0, marking a critical transition from the technology-centric focus of Industry 4.0 to a human-centric, value-driven paradigm. While its predecessor prioritized automation and technology, Industry 5.0 integrates advanced human–machine collaboration with social imperatives to create resilience. This study advances current literature by presenting a novel systems-based framework, grounded in systems theory and legitimacy theory, which conceptualizes Industry 5.0 as an interconnected ecosystem rather than isolated pillars. We identify technological adaptation, specifically AI integration, and human-centricity as critical inputs that drive economic, environmental, and social sustainability as systemic outputs. By mapping these interdependencies, the model demonstrates how cohesive components collectively fuel organizational transformation. These findings offer actionable insights for aligning corporate strategies with Sustainable Development Goals, providing policymakers and practitioners with future-oriented pathways to navigate this complex, emerging industrial environment.

Pension policies are an increasingly important topic in British elections. This paper discusses what the first year under a Labour government has meant for pension policy, drawing on the Labour Party’s pre-election pledges, before critically considering future directions of pension policy and areas not currently addressed by the Labour government, or where policies could go further. The paper argues that structural inequalities in the labour market and the pension system persist, with consistent evidence of gender and ethnic inequalities in labour market participation, the nature of such participation, pension outcomes, and a range of financial and non-financial wellbeing indicators. Placing adequacy and fairness at the heart of Labour policy can send a strong message on the government’s part of understanding the complex interactions of opportunities and costs across the lifecourse for individuals from diverse backgrounds, and anticipating further demographic and socio-economic changes in the British society and economy.

The ‘Digital Economy and Society Index’ (DESI) Dashboard for the Digital Decade is a set of indicators created by the European Union in the early 2010s to monitor Member States’ progress in pursuing the EU’s Digital Agenda, as well as many of the goals of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainability. The figures provided by the Dashboard are perceived by academics, the media and the general public as objective neutral data on the progress of Member States towards digitalisation, and on the promotion of sustainable development. This short contribution unpacks the Dashboard, examining the variables it considers and the methodology it employs, and finds out a very different picture. The Dashboard mainly assesses how easily people can access products and services online. It thus promotes a pro-market digitalisation agenda that excludes any other possible alternative and has little to do (if any) with the idea of sustainability. As is often the case with quantitative measurements of social phenomena, behind its seemingly scientific numerical veil the Dashboard conveys a policy vision that is hardly compatible with the objectives the Dashboard allegedly promotes. The essay thus raises broader questions as to the legitimacy of governing through indicators and as to the role of EU in shaping Member States’ digital future.

This study presents a systematic review of peer-reviewed academic literature to explore the current landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in sustainable aviation operations. Using a qualitative content analysis approach, four main thematic domains were identified, encompassing emission and fuel efficiency, maintenance reliability, infrastructure sustainability and education- or policy-related applications. In addition to thematic synthesis, the study mapped the annual publication frequency, the AI methods employed and the aviation domains targeted. The results reveal an increasing interest in hybrid and deep learning models, such as long short-term memory (LSTM), convolutional neural networks (CNN) and attention-based architectures, particularly in-flight optimisation and delay prediction tasks. AI-based flight optimisation techniques, such as trajectory prediction and adaptive fuel management, contribute to reducing CO2 emissions through more efficient flight planning and operations. Moreover, predictive maintenance supported by AI-driven digital twin systems has gained prominence due to its potential to reduce downtime and increase safety. The discussion further addresses regulatory challenges, the importance of explainable AI and integration barriers within complex aviation ecosystems. Findings are derived from a focused corpus of 27 peer-reviewed studies, which, although limited in number, offer representative insights into current sectoral trends. This review makes a significant contribution to both academia and industry by offering a comprehensive framework that categorises AI applications and highlights future research directions. Key implications include the need for regulatory harmonisation, real-time decision-support tools, and interdisciplinary approaches that integrate AI with behavioural sciences and sustainability goals.