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Current air quality legislation in Europe will lead to substantial air quality improvements, but without further emission control efforts, the most critical hotspots will persist, with important impacts on the environment and human health. Integrated assessment models (IAM) can be applied to local and regional scale to support the assessment of mitigation opportunities and decision-making process. The mitigation measures need to be sustainable, and subsequently, social, economic, and environmental factors need to be balanced. This paper proposes the use of the well-known DPSIR framework, which is composed by Driving forces, Pressures, State, Impacts, and Responses. The urban area of Porto (Northern Portugal) is the selected case study, and DPSIR radar charts are used to easily compare different IAM approaches and help researchers and policy-makers to achieve the objective of air quality improvement. Results indicate that the MAPLIA system based on scenario approach and the RIAT+ system based on optimization approach provide more detailed and comprehensive information, namely concerning health (Impacts), then the previously designed Porto’s air quality plans.

This study employs an integrated analytical framework combining the Social-Ecological System (SES) and Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) models, supplemented by quantitative methodologies including the Entropy Weight Method (EWM), Generalized Additive Model (GAM), Lasso regression, and shallow neural networks, to conduct a systematic resilience assessment of six representative Tibetan villages in western Sichuan based on longitudinal data from 2015 to 2022. The analysis reveals significant differences in resilience levels among the villages, primarily influenced by multiple factors. Disposable income and employment are key positive drivers that enhance adaptive capacity and resilience. Conversely, excessive reliance on policy interventions may constrain local self-organization and adaptive governance. The study highlights the complexity of balancing ecological sustainability with economic growth, underscoring the need for flexible and inclusive policy frameworks. Furthermore, the findings indicate that integrating top-down policies with community-based governance can effectively mitigate external pressures. Key recommendations involve promoting economic diversification via agroecology and cultural tourism, enhancing local governance capacity, and adopting adaptive environmental policies. These strategies are crucial for reducing dependence on traditional agriculture and alleviating resource pressures. The insights gained from this study deepen the understanding of restoration mechanisms in ecologically fragile areas and contribute to the development of effective strategies for sustainable management.

Globally, forests provide several functions and services to support humans’ well-being and the mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The services that forests provide enable the forest-dependent people and communities to meet their livelihood needs and well-being. Nevertheless, the world’s forests face a twin environmental problem of deforestation and forest degradation (D&FD), resulting in ubiquitous depletion of forest biodiversity and ecosystem services and eventual loss of forest cover. Ghana, like any tropical forest developing country, is not immune to these human-caused D&FD. This paper reviews Ghana’s D&FD driven by a plethora of pressures, despite many forest policies and interventions to ensure sustainable management and forest use. The review is important as Ghana is experiencing an annual D&FD rate of 2%, equivalent to 135,000 hectares loss of forest cover. Although some studies have focused on the causes of D&FD on Ghana’ forests, they failed to show the chain of causal links of drivers that cause D&FD. This review fills the knowledge and practice gap by adopting the Driver-Pressures-State-Impacts-Responses (DPSIR) analytical framework to analyse the literature-based sources of causes D&FD in Ghana. Specifically, the analysis identified agriculture expansion, cocoa farming expansion, illegal logging, illegal mining, population growth and policy failures and lapses as the key drivers of Ghana’s D&FD. The study uses the DPSIR analytical framework to show the chain of causal links that lead to the country’s D&FD and highlights the numerous interventions required to reverse and halt the ubiquitous perpetual trend of D&FD in Ghana. Similar tropical forest countries experiencing D&FD will find the review most useful to curtail the menace.

An objective understanding of the current situation and influencing factors of rural green development in China is an important prerequisite for effective formulation making of green development policies. Based on the panel data of 31 provinces of China from the year 1997 to 2017, this paper constructs and measures the rural green development efficiency (RGDE) based on Driving-Force, Pressure, State, Influence, Response (DPSIR) model and super-efficiency slacks-based measure (SBM) model. The results show that, the overall RGDE in China is fluctuating and rising from 1997 to 2017, and there are some differences between and within regions. The RGDE in developed areas is higher than that in developing areas, and coastal areas are higher than that in inland areas. The entire country, eastern, central, and western regions show σ convergence, which indicates that the RGDE is getting better, but there is no absolute β convergence, that means there is no “catch-up effect” between regions, but the gradient divergence showed central > eastern > western. At the same time, there is no conditional β convergence; the initial RGDE has a positive impact on the growth rate of RGDE, and the financial self-sufficiency rate promotes the growth of RGDE of the whole country and the western region, but inhibits the improvement of RGDE of the eastern region. The per capita GDP, mechanization degree, and agricultural industrial structure in rural areas did not promote the growth of RGDE. Based on the results, this paper puts forward some policy suggestions, such as promoting the classified implementation of rural green development policies, strengthening the top-level design, optimizing the existing agricultural mechanism and system, and guiding and standardizing the farmers’ green production behavior.

Green finance is an emerging topic which is broadly discussed in context of adapting and mitigating environmental deterioration due to climate change. As an effective incentive mechanism, it provides strong support for carbon emission reduction. However, a limited review articles investigate the specific combination of green finance and carbon emission reduction. Here, we apply a bibliometric analysis to review research on green finance and carbon emission reduction based on the literature from 2010 to 2021 in the Web of Science core database. The results indicate that countries with the most publications were those with high economic development, salient environmental problems, and a strong demand for ecological protection. Top publishing journals include Climate Policy, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Energy Policy. The author collaboration is fragmented, mostly less than three researchers. Based on analyses of keyword frequency and centrality, deforestation, carbon markets, and financial development were the most significant research topics. The research hotspots included clean development mechanism, adaptation, carbon market, and sequestration. Finally, the DPSIR framework is applied to explore driving forces, state, pressure, impact and response of current research. We hope our work provides a systematic review of green finance for carbon emission reduction to boost the research in this field.

Urban air pollution, especially in the form of haze events, has become a serious threat to socio-economic development and public health in most developing countries. It is of great importance to assess the frequency of urban air pollution occurrence and its influencing factors. The objective of our study is to develop consistent methodologies for constructing an index system and for assessing the influencing factors of the urban air pollution occurrence based on the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework by incorporating spatial analysis, geographical detector, and geographically weighted regression models. The 27 influencing factors were selected for assessing their influences on the urban air pollution occurrence in 337 Chinese cities. The results indicate that the spatial pattern of the urban air pollution in China was mostly consistent with the Chinese population-based Hu Line. Urban air pollution frequently occurred in North China, Central China, Northeast China, and East China, and displayed strong seasonality. The influencing factors of urban air pollution were complex and diverse, varying from season to season. Influencing factor analysis also shows that the explanatory power between any two influencing factors was greater than that of a single influencing factor of the urban air pollution. Furthermore, most influencing factors had both positive and negative effects and local effects on urban air pollution. Finally, we put forward five suggestions on reducing urban air pollution occurrence, which can provide the basis and reference for the government to make policies on urban air pollution control in China. Graphical abstract

Marine microplastic pollution (MMP) is becoming one of the most pressing environmental problems facing humanity today. The novel coronavirus epidemic has raised the issue of environmental contamination caused by large-scale improper disposal of medical waste such as disposable masks (DMs). To assess the impact of MMP caused by DMs and to seek solutions for the prevention and control of MMP, this study uses the Driving force-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework to establish a causal chain of MMP caused by DMs. The conclusion shows that the novel coronavirus epidemic has led to a surge in the use of DMs, which has brought pressure on resource constraints and environmental pollution at the same time. Improperly DMs enter the environment and eventually transform into MMP, which not only endangers the marine ecological system but also poses potential human health risks as well as economic and social hazards. In addition, further research on environmentally friendly masks (cloth masks and biodegradable masks) is essential to mitigate the environmental damage caused by the large-scale global use of DMs. This study provides a scientific and theoretical basis for the assessment of MMP from discarded DMs, and the findings of this study will provide a reference for the formulation of relevant policies.

Building resilient cities that can survive, adapt, and thrive amid climate and ecological challenges has become a global priority, yet achieving this goal requires adequate financial support. This study investigates the impact of green finance on urban ecological resilience (UER) by exploiting the establishment of China’s Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zones (GFPZs) as a policy shock. Using a DPSIR-based (driving force–pressure–state–impact–response) evaluation framework and a staggered difference-in-differences approach with panel data from 277 cities (2011–2022), the empirical results show that (1) the GFPZ policy significantly enhances UER; (2) green finance improves UER through three transmission channels—government environmental governance, green technological innovation, and public environmental participation; (3) the policy effects display clear spatial and structural heterogeneity, with stronger impacts in southern, less-developed, and non-traditional industrial cities, as well as positive local effects, negative spatial spillovers, and significant synergies with national big data pilot zones. This study clarifies how financial instruments contribute to building resilient cities and offers insights for embedding green finance into urban ecological strategies.

River sand mining has been a concerning problem for the southern Asian developing nations. The rampant growth of urbanisation in developing countries has led to an extensive need for and consumption of sand. The Mekong River and its delta are an essential part of southern Vietnam, and also a global biodiversity hub that is currently being exhausted by intensive sand mining. The understanding of the cause–effect of the sand mining over the Mekong delta region and river, from a systems-thinking perspective, is lacking, not only with Vietnam but also with other countries along the Mekong River. The DPSIR framework (Driver–Pressure–State–Impact–Response) is a useful tool to assess and describe the cause–effect within an ecosystem to aid in a better systems-thinking approach for stakeholders, policy makers, and governance managers to draft response measures. This study used the DPSIR framework to assess the different effects of sand mining on the ecosystem services and human well-being in the Mekong River and delta region of Vietnam. Rapid population growth, urbanisation, and infrastructure development needs remain as primary drivers for the sand consumption. The DPSIR study showed a holistic view of several interlinked pressures and state changes in Vietnam’s Mekong, along with some potential responses, to form systematic, sustainable approaches for mitigating and adapting the impacts caused by extensive river sand mining.