Search Results (265)

Efforts to build a sociobiodiversity-based bioeconomy increasingly depend on recognizing and rewarding the stewardship practices carried out by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, and smallholder farmers. Yet, such practices, rooted in collective governance, traditional knowledge, and care for ecosystems, remain largely invisible in market and policy frameworks. This study compares recognition mechanisms for stewardship practices worldwide (38 case studies) and in Brazilian projects supporting sociobiodiversity chains (384 projects) using an inductive typology of material and non-material recognition and Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation. Results show that 70% of cases combine multiple recognition forms, but their distribution and empowerment outcomes diverge. Globally, recognition mechanisms are more balanced, often codified in laws, participatory councils, and payment-for-ecosystem-service schemes that place communities on the upper rungs of Arnstein’s ladder, with co-management authority. In Brazilian projects, recognition remains predominantly material and focused on short-term interventions–capacity-building, equipment, and market access, corresponding to lower rungs of citizen participation. Overcoming this condition requires policies that couple economic incentives with institutionalized participation. Markets alone will not value the non-material elements that sustain sociobiodiversity. Implementing Brazil’s National Bioeconomy Strategy will therefore depend on public policies that reward both the products and the collective stewardship behind them. Full article

The rapid convergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and decentralized finance (DeFi) is reshaping the digital economy by enabling autonomous, trustless, and value-driven interactions among connected devices. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the emerging paradigm that combines IoT’s pervasive sensing and communication capabilities with DeFi’s programmable financial infrastructure. We first discuss the motivation behind this convergence and explore key opportunities, including autonomous machine-to-machine (M2M) payments, decentralized data marketplaces, and trustless IoT service provisioning. Despite its potential, IoT–DeFi integration introduces significant security and privacy challenges related to smart contract vulnerabilities, consensus protocol risks, oracle manipulation, and constrained device capabilities. We review existing mitigation approaches such as lightweight cryptography, secure contract design, and decentralized identity management, and critically assess their limitations in heterogeneous, resource-limited environments. Building on this analysis, identify research gaps and propose future directions emphasizing formal verification of IoT-integrated smart contracts, robust oracle design, interoperability frameworks, and privacy-preserving trust models. This survey systematically maps opportunities, threats, and open issues. In doing so, it guides researchers and practitioners toward building secure, scalable, and energy-efficient IoT–DeFi ecosystems for next-generation decentralized applications. Full article

China possesses 400 million hectares of grasslands that provide regulating ecosystem services (ESs), including wind erosion control, water conservation, and carbon sequestration. The central government implemented the Grassland Ecological Protection Subsidy and Reward Policy (GERCP) in 2011, allocating 150 billion yuan (approximately $23 billion) through 2020, while national vegetation coverage increased from 51.0% in 2011 to 56.1% in 2020. Existing valuation studies emphasize total economic value but rarely quantify the concentration of ES values across space or their alignment with fiscal allocation. We compiled 734 grassland ES valuation observations from 186 studies published between 2000 and 2024, and estimated a multi-level mixed-effects meta-regression model for benefit transfer. We projected standardized county-level ES values, decomposed spatial inequality using the Gini coefficient and Theil index, and assessed the mismatch between value-informed allocation weights and observed GERCP transfers. Predicted values exhibit high concentration (Gini coefficient = 0.58), and between-zone differences explain 52% of total Theil inequality. The mismatch analysis identifies 94 high-value and low-compensation counties concentrated in southern Qinghai and northern Tibet, where per-hectare values are 180 to 240% above national medians, and compensation is 35 to 55% below the median. The results support value-informed targeting and redistribution of fiscal weights across regions, while payment levels require pricing benchmarks based on opportunity cost or conservation cost rather than total economic value. We propose calibrating compensation rates through a tiered schedule based on ESV quantiles or standardized ecosystem-service bundles, and implementing county-level differentiated payments with periodic updating tied to monitoring and evaluation. As a minimum viable step, we recommend piloting this scheme in counties with high ESV yet low current compensation, and integrating it into existing ecological compensation funding channels to reduce administrative frictions. Full article

Watersheds provide fundamental hydrological ecosystem services for human well-being and the environment, such as water provisioning, hydrological cycle regulation, and erosion control; however, these services face increasing anthropogenic and climatic pressures. This study assessed individual and combined impacts on the hydrological functionality of the Piuray–Ccorimarca watershed (Cusco, Peru) using a calibrated Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model, analyzing water yield, soil water storage, and sediment transport across 20 scenarios. An ensemble of 10 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models with bias correction was implemented, integrated with land transformation projections contemplating urban expansion associated with airport development and forest recovery through Payment for Ecosystem Services mechanisms. The results reveal climate change as the dominant driver, generating water yield increases and soil water content improvements primarily due to evapotranspiration decoupling that increases the runoff coefficient. In contrast, land use change produces substantially smaller hydrological effects but critically intensifies sediment yield. Spatial vulnerability analysis identified eight persistently critical sub-basins (20.5% of area) where soil water content emerged as the dominant limiting factor. These findings establish a clear management hierarchy prioritizing climate adaptation over land use interventions, with differentiated strategies required for critical zones demanding structural interventions versus non-critical areas amenable to flexible conservation approaches. Full article

The emergence of the Smart Cities paradigm and the rapid expansion and integration of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies within this context have created unprecedented opportunities for high-resolution behavioral analytics, urban optimization, and context-aware services. However, this same proliferation intensifies privacy risks, particularly those arising from cross-modal data linkage across heterogeneous sensing platforms. To address these challenges, this paper introduces a comprehensive, statistically grounded framework for generating synthetic, multimodal IoT datasets tailored to Smart City research. The framework produces behaviorally plausible synthetic data suitable for preliminary privacy risk assessment and as a benchmark for future re-identification studies, as well as for evaluating algorithms in mobility modeling, urban informatics, and privacy-enhancing technologies. As part of our approach, we formalize probabilistic methods for synthesizing three heterogeneous and operationally relevant data streams—cellular mobility traces, payment terminal transaction logs, and Smart Retail nutrition records—capturing the behaviors of a large number of synthetically generated urban residents over a 12-week period. The framework integrates spatially explicit merchant selection using K-Dimensional (KD)-tree nearest-neighbor algorithms, temporally correlated anchor-based mobility simulation reflective of daily urban rhythms, and dietary-constraint filtering to preserve ecological validity in consumption patterns. In total, the system generates approximately 116 million mobility pings, 5.4 million transactions, and 1.9 million itemized purchases, yielding a reproducible benchmark for evaluating multimodal analytics, privacy-preserving computation, and secure IoT data-sharing protocols. To show the validity of this dataset, the underlying distributions of these residents were successfully validated against reported distributions in published research. We present preliminary uniqueness and cross-modal linkage indicators; comprehensive re-identification benchmarking against specific attack algorithms is planned as future work. This framework can be easily adapted to various scenarios of interest in Smart Cities and other IoT applications. By aligning methodological rigor with the operational needs of Smart City ecosystems, this work fills critical gaps in synthetic data generation for privacy-sensitive domains, including intelligent transportation systems, urban health informatics, and next-generation digital commerce infrastructures. Full article

Grasslands represent an essential resource for rural economies and for the provision of ecosystem services, yet they are increasingly affected by anthropogenic pressures, functional land-use changes, and institutional constraints. This study develops a geospatial decision-support framework for assessing grassland suitability in Hunedoara County, Romania, by integrating the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Weighted Overlay Analysis (WOA) within a GIS environment. The assessment is based on nine criteria thematically grouped into three dimensions: (A) physical-geographical, including topographic suitability, climatic pressure, and hydrological risk exposure; (B) ecological and conservation-related, reflected by ecological conservation value, ecological carrying capacity, and the anthropic pressure index; and (C) socio-economic and functional, represented by spatial accessibility, recreational value, and policy support mechanisms. Suitability is defined as the integrated capacity of grasslands to sustain productive and multifunctional uses compatible with ecological conservation and the existing policy framework. Results indicate that 0.43% of the grassland area exhibits very high suitability (Class 1), 44.51% high suitability (Class 2), and 54.75% moderate suitability (Class 3), while unfavorable areas account for only 0.31% of the total (Class 4). The proposed methodology is reproducible and transferable, providing support for prioritizing management interventions, agri-environmental payments, and rural planning in mountainous and hilly regions. Full article

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PESs) have become a central instrument in global biodiversity finance, yet endangered species-specific PESs remain rare and poorly understood in implementation terms. Taiwan provides a revealing case: a three-year program paying farmers to conserve four threatened species—Prionailurus bengalensis, Lutra lutra, Tyto longimembris, and Hydrophasianus chirurgus—in working farmland across Taiwan and Kinmen island. Through semi-structured interviews with farmers, residents, and local conservation actors, we examine how payments are interpreted, rationalized, enacted, and emotionally experienced at the ground level. This study adopts Colaizzi’s data analysis method, the primary advantage of which lies in its ability to systematically transform fragmented and emotive interview narratives into a logically structured essential description. This is achieved through the rigorous extraction of significant statements and the subsequent synthesis of thematic clusters. Participants reported willingness to continue not only because subsidies offset losses, but because rarity, community pride, and the visible arc of “we helped this creature survive” became internalized rewards. NGOs amplified this shift by translating science into farm practice and “normalizing” coexistence. In practice, conservation work became a social project—identifying threats, altering routines, and defending habitat as a shared civic act. This study does not estimate treatment-effect size; instead, it delivers mechanistic insight at a live policy moment, as Taiwan expands PESs and the OECD pushes incentive reform. The finding is simple and strategically important: endangered-species PESs work best where payments trigger meaning—not where payments replace it. Full article

Research on users’ switching intentions in peer-to-peer (P2P) mobile payment systems, particularly in developing markets, remains limited. This study examines how two satisfaction dimensions, transaction-based satisfaction and experience-based satisfaction, influence switching intentions through two layers of trust: institution-based trust and disposition to trust. Grounded in Expectancy-Disconfirmation Theory, data from 529 users of Haiti’s leading P2P mobile payment platform were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results show that while transaction-based satisfaction has minimal impact on switching intentions, experience-based satisfaction strengthens institution-based trust, which in turn significantly reduces switching intentions. These findings highlight the central role of institutional reliability in shaping post-adoption behavior in duopolistic and resource-constrained markets. The study extends satisfaction-trust theory to digital financial ecosystems and offers practical insights for improving user retention through sustained institutional credibility and long-term service reliability. Full article

The Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, in southeastern Mexico, is a major conservation area known for its tropical forests, emblematic wildlife species, and long history of Maya occupation. Established in 1989 as a federal Natural Protected Area, it was incorporated into UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Program in 1993 and designated a mixed World Heritage Site in 2014. Its socioecological trajectory is distinctive: conservation efforts advanced alongside the contemporary rural settlement resulting from agrarian reform and subsequent development and welfare policies. This article examines the persistent imbalance between ecological conservation and socioeconomic development surrounding the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, focusing on water vulnerability in adjacent communities. The study integrates environmental history with household-level survey data on water access and vulnerability among 200 households in eight communities in the Biosphere Reserve’s transition zone, complemented by interviews with key water-management stakeholders. We document the consolidation of conservation through management plans, advisory councils, payments for ecosystem services, scientific research, and expanding voluntary conservation areas. Yet these advances contrast sharply with everyday socioeconomic realities: 68% of households face prolonged water scarcity, with an average of more than 30 days annually without water. Calakmul’s case highlights structural mismatch between conservation and local human well-being in Natural Protected Areas contexts. Full article

Ecological compensation is an important policy tool for coordinating ecological protection and economic development and narrowing regional disparities. In China, Linyi, for the first time, applied a cap-and-trade policy to the forestry sector by implementing the Intergovernmental Forest Ecological Indicator Trading Policy (IFEITP)—a new ecological compensation policy—to increase the city’s overall forest coverage. However, the compensation standard for this policy was formulated solely by referring to provincial afforestation subsidy standards, resulting in excessively low indicator trading prices and making the policy difficult to sustain. This paper proposes a technical framework for ecological compensation based on the ecosystem service spillover value (ESSV), aiming to optimize the IFEITP. The results revealed that during the policy implementation period, Linyi’s total ecosystem service value (ESV) increased, and the proportion of ESV provided by forests in each district and county also increased. Under the new framework, there were minor changes in the ecosystem service supply zones and payment zones. The compensation received by supply zones increased by 116.2%, whereas the payments made by payment zones accounted for less than 0.2% of local fiscal revenue. The newly calculated indicator trading price under this framework not only reflects the value of ecosystem services but also remains within the acceptable range of government finances, demonstrating high operability and providing a basis for optimizing the IFEITP. This study offers broader insights for regions with similar ecological and socioeconomic conditions, enabling the application of analogous ecological compensation policies to maintain environmental justice and promote sustainable development. Full article

The responses of agricultural households are the central link in China’s eco-compensation, which directly determines the efficiency and effectiveness of compensation. This article reviewed the connotation, influencing factors, and ultimate effectiveness of agricultural households’ response to eco-compensation in China. The results indicated that agricultural households’ response to eco-compensation mainly includes reducing production intensity, optimizing production methods, and changing livelihood types. On this basis, taking protected objects such as farmland, grassland, forests, and watersheds as examples, the specific connotation of the responses was explained. Subsequently, according to policy mechanisms, sustainable livelihood theory, and planned behavior theory, the factors that affect agricultural households’ responses have been sorted out, forming a systematic factor system framework. In addition, focusing on the policy objectives of eco-compensation, the research progress on the economic and ecological effects of agricultural households’ responses, and the final results were summarized. Finally, this article identifies four shortcomings in the current research, namely imbalanced research fields, incomplete contextual impact, nonspecific ecological effects, and immature improvement strategies. The future literature should strengthen research in key fields and areas, focus on the correlation between contexts and responses, integrate multiple disciplines to accurately evaluate ecological effects, and demonstrate the improvement mechanism of agricultural households’ responses. Full article

We examined the positions of policymakers and businesses on the forest-based bioeconomy (FBE) in Slovenia, focusing on the importance of forest ecosystem services within the FBE. We also explored how businesses perceive their market potential and the role of payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes in strengthening the FBE. We conducted interviews with 35 policymakers from the fields of forestry, the wood industry, the environment, and tourism, as well as with 24 business representatives from primary wood production, the wood industry, and forest tourism. Respondents identified fragmented land ownership (mean score on a 1–5 scale = 4.19), the lack of a strategic framework (4.12), and inefficient use of woody biomass (4.08) as key challenges to implementing the FBE in Slovenia. They highlighted knowledge transfer (4.54), investment support (4.47), and raising environmental awareness (4.44) as the main forms of state support for the FBE, while unfamiliarity with PES appears to contribute to its neglect. No significant sectoral differences were observed among policymakers regarding PES involvement; however, they viewed their role mainly in the design phase of PES and least in the phases of coordination and establishment. Greater interest in participating in PES was expressed by forest tourism businesses, despite perceiving lower market potential than those in primary wood production and the wood industry. The evident heterogeneity of stakeholder positions on the FBE calls for strong coordination and a transparent policy process involving all stakeholder coalitions to establish a coherent national strategy for the FBE. The results highlighted policymakers’ limited governance capacity and reluctance to fully implement PES as a potential solution for strengthening the FBE. The differing motivations of businesses regarding PES underscore the need for a nuanced, sector-specific approach to foster broader engagement. Full article

Background: Fintech companies have revolutionized the financial services industry in India in recent years. This is especially true for the growth of digital payment methods. India’s unbanked are being introduced to banking by fintech companies. Despite the country’s strong banking system, many residents find it difficult to get government financial services. This is particularly true for rural or low-income people. This vacuum has been addressed by fintech solutions including digital banking, micro-lending applications, mobile wallets, and UPI platforms. Objectives: to study the impact of financial technology businesses on increasing financial inclusion for India’s underbanked and unbanked population and Challenges encountered by financial technology enterprises in their endeavors to access unbanked populations, encompassing concerns of infrastructure with special reference to western Uttar Pradesh. Method: This mixed-methods study examines how FinTech is narrowing the financial gap for unbanked people using quantitative econometric analysis and qualitative case study assessments. Results: Digital financial innovation and regulatory support encourage inclusive growth in underdeveloped economies, whereas rich nations benefit from sophisticated banking institutions. This is indicated by the small influence of GDP per capita (β = 0.22–0.32, p < 0.05). Findings: The study found that inclusive finance is revolutionized when FinTech is used with the help of robust regulatory frameworks and digital infrastructure. Policymakers should prioritize cybersecurity, public-private partnerships to improve digital literacy, and rural connection if they want more people to take part in the digital financial ecosystem. Implications: FinTech can remove obstacles to accessing financing. The proper coordinated improvements in regulatory frameworks, digital infrastructure and financial literacy among the people are necessary to achieve full financial inclusion. Full article

This study explores the digital transformation and public value created through the target city’s smart city Mobile Payment APP and digital city token system within the context of sustainable governance in Taiwan. Adopting a convergent mixed-methods research design, this research integrates quantitative Importance–Performance Analysis (IPA) surveys of 632 users with qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews involving eight key stakeholders (namely, government officials, system developers, affiliated merchants, and citizen representatives). This methodology assesses service quality, user satisfaction, and cross-sector collaboration effects. The findings reveal that the mobile payment platform significantly enhances digital service delivery; fosters user engagement; and supports sustainable urban development goals, particularly net-zero carbon emissions. However, the IPA results highlight critical service gaps in the “Priority Improvement Zone,” specifically regarding the insufficient number of affiliated merchants and inconvenient information search functions. Qualitative findings attribute these gaps to cross-departmental administrative barriers and security-focused design trade-offs. This study contributes empirical evidence on the integration of financial technology and public service innovation as a means to advance smart governance and sustainable urban ecosystems. The results provide actionable insights for policymakers, city planners, and service designers focused on promoting digital public services that facilitate economic vitality, environmental sustainability, and collaborative governance. Full article

Due to the mobility of many pest species, effective integrated pest management (IPM) requires spatial coordination of management actions. This paper examines how the consideration of spatial dynamics, spatially coordinated collaboration, and supportive policy instruments improve pest management in agricultural landscapes. We consider empirical studies that explore the effects of spatial structure and processes on pest dynamics; conceptual frameworks that address larger spatial scales, such as Area-Wide Pest Management (AWPM); and policy instruments such as Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) that have an impact on the land use in agricultural landscapes. The aim is to highlight how these three pillars of effective pest management are interrelated. Challenges and approaches for the establishment of spatial collaboration in agricultural pest management are identified and avenues for future research are presented. Full article