BOOK REVIEW ON CITIES AS SUSTAINABLE ECOSYSTEMS: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES. Authors: Peter Newman and Isabella Jennings

The book is a positive image of how cities can contribute not only to a better economic and social future but also a profoundly better ecological future. "Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems" shows how cities can begin to reintegrate into their bioregional environment and planned taking into account nature's organizing principles. Therefore, professor Peter Newman and Isabella Jennings reassess urban design by exploring flows of energy, materials, and information, along with the interactions between human and non-human parts of the system. "Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems" describes aspects of urban ecosystems, being a powerful model for urban redevelopmentSustainable Ecosystems, urban development, urban ecosystems

Governance of nonprofit platforms-Onboarding mechanisms for a refugee information platform

The number of refugees arriving in Europe has increased dramatically in 2015. While governments, initiatives, and volunteers have invested substantial effort into supporting refugees, an information deficit impedes the efficacy of this collaboration. Information platforms are used to tackle this information deficit. However, the onboarding process of information providers is a critical challenge for the platforms?overall success. On the basis of observations, interviews with information providers and user experience tests, we drafted a case study describing the governance strategies applied to establish a sustainable onboarding of information providers on a nonprofit information platform for refugees. Contributing to recent literature on platform governance, our results show that governance mechanisms are implemented differently for nonprofit platform ecosystems than for commercial platform ecosystems. Building on our results, we provide practical implications by deriving a platform governance strategy that supports a sustainable onboarding of information providers

Establishing a Sustainable Development Goal for Oceans and Coasts to Face the Challenges of our Future Ocean

Oceans regulate our climate, provide us with natural resources such as food, materials, substances, and energy and are essential for international trade, recreational, and cultural activities. Free access to and availability of ocean resources and services, together with human development, have put strong pressures on marine ecosystems, ranging from overfishing and reckless resource extraction to various channels of careless pollution. International cooperation and negotiations are required to protect the marine environment and use marine resources in a way that the needs of future generations will be met. For that purpose, developing and agreeing on a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Oceans and Coasts could be an essential element for sustainable ocean management. The SDGs will build upon the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and replace them by 2015. Even though ensuring environmental sustainability is one of the eight MDG goals, the ocean is not explicitly included. Furthermore, the creation of a comprehensive underlying set of oceanic sustainability indicators would help assessing the current status of marine systems, diagnose on-going trends, and provide information for forward-locking and sustainable ocean governance

Towards An Agriculture Information Ecosystem

Stakeholders of a domain in their day today activities generate information which is a valuable resource. To obtain full value of this information it should reach right people at the right time. To investigate how this can be achieved we developed an information flow model for agriculture domain by mapping information needed by stakeholders to information generated by others using set of aggregation and disaggregation operators. We found majority of information needs of stakeholders can be fulfilled by applying these operators to information produced by some other stakeholders thus creating a direct benefit to encourage sharing information. This information flow model had many similarities to biological ecosystems where nutrient cycles and energy flows are replaced by information flows. Based on this information ecosystem model we are developing a mobile based information system for farmers in Sri Lanka. Like biological ecosystems information ecosystems will also need time to grow and become sustainable

Identifying ecosystem key factors to support sustainable water management

There is a growing consensus that sustainable development requires a behavioral change, forced by firm decision-making. However, existing decision-supporting tools are unlikely to provide relevant information, hampered by the complexity of combined socio-economic and natural systems. Protecting the intrinsic value of ecosystems and providing sufficient natural resources for human use at the same time leads up to a wide span of management, ranging from species traits to governance. The aim of this study is to investigate the interactions between the natural and economic systems from the perspective of sustainable development. The way to reduce systems complexity by selecting key factors of ecosystem functioning for policy and management purposes is discussed. To achieve this, the Pentatope Model is used as a holistic framework, an ecosystem nodes network is developed to select key factors, and a combined natural and socio-economic valuation scheme is drawn. These key factors—abiotic resources and conditions, biodiversity, and biomass—are considered fundamental to the ecosystem properties habitat range and carrying capacity. Their characteristics are discussed in relation to sustainable water management. The conclusion is that sustainable development requires environmental decision-making that includes the intrinsic natural value, and should be supported by ecological modelling, additional environmental quality standards, and substance balances

Insight from the 5th World Water Forum on Securing Water for Food and Ecosystems in Africa : Report on BOCI Project BO-10-004-003: Water Conventions

Water scarcity is considered to be one of the largest threats for many parts of Africa. Under water scarce conditions reducing the consumption of water and preventing pollution of accessible water resources is essential. Combating water scarcity in both dimensions of quality and quantity is of special relevance for the LNV priority regions (including those in Water Mondiaal). Future LNV policies to address food security in Africa will affect the use, spread and fate of agrochemicals as well. Very little information is available on how this might effect the ecosystem approach (including biodiversity, increased resilience, and multiple-use potential) in land use plannin

National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans: Natural Catalysts for Accelerating Action on Sustainable Development Goals

In 2010, the Conference of Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) agreed to an ambitious set of 20 targets, called the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, as part of their commitment to the CBD Strategic Plan. One of the Targets (Target 17) called for each country to revise its National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plan (NBSAP) in accordance with the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. From 2010 to November 2016, virtually all countries have revised, or are currently completing the revision of, their NBSAP. As of November 2016, 123 countries (76 of them eligible for official development assistance) have submitted post-2010 NBSAPs. At the same time, the world agreed to an ambitious set of 17 Goals and 169 Targets in 2015, called the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The absence of a widely accepted taxonomy for describing NBSAP actions makes any systematic and cross-cutting analysis of NBSAPs difficult. Moreover, the collective contribution of specific NBSAP actions to SDGs has not yet been studied. The purpose of this report is to systematically understand the breadth and depth of actions proposed across all NBSAPs, to propose a common framework for analysis, and to understand the relationship between NBSAPs and the SDGsThe data in this report comes from more than 6000 actions included in NBSAPs of 60 countries. These NBSAPs have all been submitted to the Secretariat of the CBD after 2010, and all are from countries eligible to received funding from the Global Environmental Facility. The researchers tagged each of the actions in this analysis not only by the thematic categories and generic actions of this taxonomy, but also by the associated primary and secondary SDGs and their associated targets (as well as by Aichi Biodiversity Targets). In doing so, the collective impact of the contribution of NBSAPs toward fulfilling the SDGs is beginning to emerge. The data from this analysis are far richer and more complex than this interim report can convey. However, it is clear from this preliminary analysis that the impact of NBSAP actions extends far beyond Goal 14 (Life Below Water) and Goal 15 (Life on Land). The NBSAP examples of actions provided under each of the categories illustrate how a single action can contribute to multiple goals. The actions included across all NBSAPs would, if fully implemented, catalyze progress in national food security, water security, livelihoods, economic growth, disaster risk reduction, health, gender and climate resilience, among other goals. Furthermore, because NBSAPs are adopted as policy instruments, they provide a ready pathway for fast implementation of national sustainable development goals.Investing in biodiversity and ecosystems through NBSAP actions also ensures that no one is left behind in the implementation of the SDGs. Nature provides a safety net to billions of people around the world: 1.6 billion people depend on forests for jobs, livelihoods, food and fuel; one out of eight people depend on fisheries for their livelihoods; and more than 4 billion people depend on medicines derived from forests for their health.  Investing in nature helps ensure that the most vulnerable people in society, especially the more than 800 million people living in poverty, have a durable safety net.The recommendations included at the end of this report highlight the potential need for targeted support to countries to implement key thematic areas. The authors hope that this preliminary analysis will enable governments, and the organizations that support them, to focus their efforts on supporting those thematic areas that will have the most impact in accelerating progress in implementing NBSAP actions. They also hope this report will encourage donor organizations to consider supporting the implementation of NBSAP actions that have direct SDG outcomes

Empirical research on the evaluation model and method of sustainability of the open source ecosystem

The development of open source brings new thinking and production modes to software engineering and computer science, and establishes a software development method and ecological environment in which groups participate. Regardless of investors, developers, participants, and managers, they are most concerned about whether the Open Source Ecosystem can be sustainable to ensure that the ecosystem they choose will serve users for a long time. Moreover, the most important quality of the software ecosystem is sustainability, and it is also a research area in Symmetry. Therefore, it is significant to assess the sustainability of the Open Source Ecosystem. However, the current measurement of the sustainability of the Open Source Ecosystem lacks universal measurement indicators, as well as a method and a model. Therefore, this paper constructs an Evaluation Indicators System, which consists of three levels: The target level, the guideline level and the evaluation level, and takes openness, stability, activity, and extensibility as measurement indicators. On this basis, a weight calculation method, based on information contribution values and a Sustainability Assessment Model, is proposed. The models and methods are used to analyze the factors affecting the sustainability of Stack Overflow (SO) ecosystem. Through the analysis, we find that every indicator in the SO ecosystem is partaking in different development trends. The development trend of a single indicator does not represent the sustainable development trend of the whole ecosystem. It is necessary to consider all of the indicators to judge that ecosystem’s sustainability. The research on the sustainability of the Open Source Ecosystem is helpful for judging software health, measuring development efficiency and adjusting organizational structure. It also provides a reference for researchers who study the sustainability of software engineering

Sustainable ICT education ecosystem

ICT education at Tertiary level in Australia is currently faced with the crisis of low student enrolments despite strong demand from the industry. This has resulted in financial sustainability issues for many university schools/departments offering ICT education. We have seen a large number of Schools or Departments known as e-Commerce, Software Engineering, Information Systems, and Computer Science in Australian Universities have shut down or merged with other Engineering or Business faculties in the last 6 years. This paper examines some findings of this crisis and proposes a framework of a sustainable ICT education ecosystem at tertiary level that may be the model to address the current crisis. The framework is inspired by the foundation of the sustainable ecological ecosystems in nature and we provide conceptual mapping of the ICT education ecosystems to the sustainable ecological ecosystem