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As part of green economics, taxes are imposed on emissions of pollutants that adversely impact the environment and public health to reward more innovative, environmentally sustainable, and low-carbon resource use. There are still many nation-states testing the concept of green taxation. Many environmental performance indicators place India low on the list of countries with the worst pollution. One of the main sources of pollution is vehicle exhaust. Green taxes will be imposed on older motor vehicles under guidelines released by the Indian government in 2021. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change received the Indian Nationally Determined Contribution Report in 2022. Taxonomies and low-carbon transport systems were prioritized in India, and incentives and tax breaks were offered to encourage the manufacture and use of vehicles that consume more ethanol. Academic discussions and literature on the subject are still lacking among the masses. Researchers intend to analyze the legal and economic measures taken by the Indian Government to curb vehicular pollution against this background. Due to its significant contribution to air and water pollution, as well as greenhouse gas emissions, the automobile industry has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. India and China, for instance, have implemented green tax policies to reduce the automotive sector’s environmental footprint and promote environmental sustainability. These policies are effective, but not all of them address the disproportionate impact of environmental injustice on vulnerable populations. Specifically, this study examines the impact of Indian green tax policies on environmental justice in the automobile industry as compared to those in China. A key aim of this study is to provide insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the green taxation policies adopted by each country in the automotive sector, as well as their implications for achieving environmental justice, by analyzing the scope, enforcement, impact on vulnerable communities, industry implications, and alignment with international commitments.

Wildlife commodification can generate benefits for biodiversity conservation, but it also has negative impacts; overexploitation of wildlife is currently one of the biggest drivers of vertebrate extinction risk. In the present article, we highlight 10 issues that in our experience impede sustainable and humane wildlife trade. Given humanity’s increasing demands on the natural world we question whether many aspects of wildlife trade can be compatible with appropriate standards for biodiversity conservation and animal welfare, and suggest that too many elements of wildlife trade as it currently stands are not sustainable for wildlife or for the livelihoods that it supports. We suggest that the onus should be on traders to demonstrate that wildlife use is sustainable, humane, and safe (with respect to disease and invasion risk), rather than on conservationists to demonstrate it is not, that there is a need for a broad acceptance of responsibility and, ultimately, widespread behavior change. We urge conservationists, practitioners, and others to take bold, progressive steps to reach consensus and action.

Tun Mustapha Park, in Sabah, Malaysia, was gazetted in May 2016 and is the first multiple-use park in Malaysia where conservation, sustainable resource use and development co-occur within one management framework. We applied a systematic conservation planning tool, Marxan with Zones, and stakeholder consultation to design and revise the draft zoning plan. This process was facilitated by Sabah Parks, a government agency, and WWF-Malaysia, under the guidance of the Tun Mustapha Park steering committee and with support from the University of Queensland. Four conservation and fishing zones, including no-take areas, were developed, each with representation and replication targets for key marine habitats, and a range of socio-economic and community objectives. Here we report on how decision-support tools informed the reserve design process in three planning stages: prioritization, government review, and community consultation. Using marine habitat and species representation as a reporting metric, we describe how the zoning plan changed at each stage of the design process. We found that the changes made to the zoning plan by the government and stakeholders resulted in plans that compromised the achievement of conservation targets because no-take areas were moved away from villages and the coastline, where unique habitats are located. The design process highlights a number of lessons learned for future conservation zoning, which we believe will be useful as many other places embark on similar zoning processes on land and in the sea.

‘Wise use’ of wetland ecosystem services has implications for achieving sustainable development goals. Globally, almost 87% of wetlands have been lost since 1700’s with losses projected to be much higher by 2050 in developing economies due to urbanisation. Little is known about how this loss might impact people’s wetland dependency at local scales in the peri-urban landscapes. To understand people’s perception about ecosystem services from the peri-urban Dankuni wetland in Eastern India and associated ecosystem changes, we conducted thirty-seven semi-structured interviews in a single village. Wetland-dependent people identified 18 ecosystem services of Dankuni wetland. The ecosystem services included 12 provisioning services and two each of regulatory, cultural and supporting services. Farming and use of wetland products including molluscs, fuelwood, fodder, fibre and fish was found to subsidize living costs and provide diverse livelihood options to local residents. However, encroachment of wetlands by factories and blockage of its riverine connection were reported as the main factors degrading the wetland.. As a result, life and livelihood of people, especially of landless widows and older residents were severely impacted. Respondents believed that it was possible to rejuvenate the wetland by restoring its riverine connections but stressed on vested interests in supporting its degradation. Their perceptions strongly impress upon the need for greater government accountability in wetland protection and integration of local knowledge along with locally suited political action in wetland restoration programmes. In this context, we strongly advocate for the implementation of laws that allow for wetland protection under a socio-ecological framework.

Environmentalists believe that the Coasean approach is economically efficient but environmentally unsustainable. While acknowledging that this approach is not always sustainable, this paper emphasises its important advantage—the presence of a criterion determining when an activity will/will not lead to an efficient/sustainable outcome. Coase formulated this criterion on what is termed in this paper “Coase’s proviso”—the balance between the net benefits of an institutional change (rearrangement of entitlements) and transaction costs associated with this change. The article also defines the terms “best use”, “second (or next) best use” and “best user”. On this basis, the paper restates Coase’s proviso and argues that there is no inherent contradiction between economic efficiency and environmental sustainability. According to the restated proviso, when the transaction costs associated with the institutional transformation establishing the best use of a resource are lower than the net benefits of this transformation, the result will be economically efficient and environmentally sustainable. However, if the transaction costs outweigh the net benefits of the best use, a second (or next) best use may be established, which will still be economically efficient, but most likely environmentally unsustainable. The paper explores a case study to check the relevance of the restated proviso.

Intensive harvesting of the mangrove crab Ucides cordatus provides subsistence for food and main or additional income to many inhabitants of mangrove areas in Northern Brazil. In order to better understand the spatial patterns of use of this natural resource as basis for sustainable resource-management, we used a combination of GPS-tracking, field observations, semi-structured interviews and participatory mapping with crab-collectors. We quantified daily working hours, traveling distance and time to, as well as collecting time inside, the patches where crabs are collected. Based on preliminary findings for three different types of transportation to the fishing grounds, we conclude that crab-collectors in our study area act in accordance with the central place optimal foraging concept in that they invest more time in traveling to areas with higher catch. We hold these findings will prove relevant for sustainably managing the use of mangrove crabs as natural resource. The parallel occurrence of different collecting-behaviours possibly releases pressure from crab stocks in the potentially depleting fishing grounds adjacent to villages, and thus, may render crab-collecting in these areas more sustainable. Detailed studies are needed to quantify the catch from different mangrove areas and to make these data useful for the sustainable management of natural resource-exploitation in mangroves.

Wild meat trade poses significant threats to biodiversity and human health. Despite these threats, trade and consumption are increasing, driven largely by growing demand in urban centers. Easy access to the internet and social media platforms further facilitates wildlife trade and consumption by connecting traders and consumers. This study examines 80 TikTok videos from public (open) accounts of two wild meat traders in Lomé, Togo, showcasing wild meat sales between November 2022 and April 2024. The videos featured various smoked wild animals, representing approximately 3,526 individuals across 27 inferred species, predominantly birds (40.9%) and mammals (39.6%), but also included reptiles (19.5%). Prices for whole smoked animals varied significantly (from a minimum of 3.4 USD to a maximum of 340 USD), depending on the species and the size of the individual animal. Among the 27 recorded species were the Endangered white-bellied pangolin ( Phataginus tricuspis ), classified as a CITES Appendix I species with a declining population trend; the Vulnerable Buffon’s kob (Kobus kob ssp. kob); the Near Threatened Defassa waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus ssp. defassa); and three CITES II-listed species. The 80 videos had each been viewed between 660 and 216,000 times, and all 80 videos had been viewed 1,795,079 times in total. This high level of visibility may fuel demand and unintentionally promote further trade by exposing a broad audience to such content. The findings highlight how social media can have significant negative conservation implications for the long-term survival and sustainable management of these species. Although enforcement mechanisms have been implemented to curb illegal wildlife trade on social media, these platforms still serve as vast, often unregulated marketplaces where traders and customers can easily connect, offering a level of convenience that traditional markets lack. We recommend that social media platforms strengthen their enforcement measures while conservationists leverage these platforms to raise awareness, promote wildlife protection laws, and mobilize public support for conservation efforts. The demand for wild meat in Lomé is driven by the growing population, cultural and economic benefits, as well as a lack of awareness. The study highlights the urgent need for targeted education, stronger enforcement of wildlife protection laws, and better communication about the legal status and conservation importance of the species.

We study under which conditions a ‘window of opportunity’ for a change from an overfishing situation, with high fishing effort, but low stocks and catches, towards sustainable fishery management arises. Studying the Eastern Baltic cod fishery we show that at very low stock sizes (as they prevailed in the early 2000s) all interest groups involved in the fishery unanimously prefer maximum-sustainable-yield management (as prescribed by the management plan in place since 2007) over the previous overfishing situation. With increasing stock sizes, the present value of fishermen surplus would be higher when switching back to overfishing again, while other interest groups maintain their preference for sustainable fishery management.