Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Stimulating sustainability in childhood. The effectiveness of communication strategies targeting children and adolescents to encourage sustainability" "Dieneke Van de Sompel" "Department of Communication Sciences" "In stimulating sustainable (and healthy) attitudes and behavior, it is important to start from a young age and to focus on minors. In that respect, children and adolescents are on the one hand an important primary (current and future) target group but also a secondary target group (for example, they influence their parents and peers). This research project therefore aims to investigate which (communication-) techniques (e.g. education, social media, nudges, etc.), with children and youngsters as a target group, can encourage (a) sustainable and healthy attitudes and behavior of minors themselves and (b) how this in turn can affect others (such as parents and peers). The project will also explore in which way this happens and via which mechanisms." "The sustainability impact of voluntary sustainability standards in the food sector: Evidence from Peru" "Miet Maertens" Bioeconomics "Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) are increasingly used as a market-based mechanism to improve and guarantee sustainability in global food trade. Despite a wide spread of VSS, especially for tropical produce, their actual sustainably impact is an unresolved issue. Previous studies on this topic are case- and discipline-specific, ignoring the variability in VSS and the various sustainability dimensions. In my PhD I provide insights on the socioeconomic and ecological impact of VSS, and on synergies and trade-offs between these impacts. I focus on Peru, an important trade partner for Belgium, and the global scale, on a variety of tropical products that are important for Belgian food imports, and on a large set of VSS. I use survey and GIS data, and advanced state-of-the-art econometric panel data methods. My research results in insights on the effectiveness of VSS, and allows to identify improvements and best practices that will be communicated to consumers, food companies, donors and civil society organizations. With my PhD, I ultimately aim at contributing to more sustainable food imports in Belgium and a more sustainable global food system." "Internation Coordination Action on effectivness of voluntary sustainability standards for United Nations forum on sustainability standards." "Jan Wouters" "Institute for International Law" "This ICA will develop a set of recommendations for economically beneficial and inclusive policies and development programs based on best practices, taking into consideration developing countries’ individual economic, social and environmental concerns. The UNFSS and the GGS will jointly facilitate and coordinate the ICA, fostering a direct and comprehensive exchange between academics and practitioners." "Rhetorical impression management in sustainability reporting and monitoring mechanisms: Interdependencies with sustainability performance and impact on financial and institutional legitimacy." "Walter Aerts" "Accountancy and Finance" "Sustainability reports are discretionary vehicles to signal sustainability performance to external constituents. Motives for their provision vary (from signaling the firm's sustainability track record to opportunistically managing perceived legitimacy on the sustainability front). Central to these motives is public perception management. A firm may resort to rhetorical impression management (IM)to strengthen the persuasiveness of its reporting in order to increase benefits of perceived sustainability efforts. The effectiveness of such rhetorical IM hinges, however, on the credibility of the messages conveyed. External assurance, institutionalized reporting formats, stakeholder engagement and internal governance structures may play a central role in establishing external credibility." "The role of non-timber forest products in the sustainability of social-ecological systems: A critical analysis of selected case-studies in the Brazilian Cerrado" "Constanza Parra Novoa" "Architecture and Society, Geography and Tourism, Forest, Nature and Landscape" "The Brazilian Cerrado is the second largest biome in South America. It occupies an area of 2,036,448 square kilometers – which corresponds to approximately 22% of the Brazilian territory – spanning over the states of Goiás, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Maranhão, Piauí, Rondônia, Paraná, São Paulo and the Distrito Federal (www.mma.gov.br). It is one of the world´s biodiversity hotspots and is recognized as the richest savanna in the planet (PPCerrado, 2010). This biome is home to 11,627 native plant species, 199 mammal species, 873 bird species, 1200 fish species, 180 reptile species and 150 amphibians (www.mma.gov.br). Furthermore, the headwaters of three major river basins in South America (Amazônica/Tocantins, São Francisco and Prata) are situated in the biome. The Brazilian Cerrado is also rich from a social and cultural perspective. Many traditional communities inhabit the biome and possess valuable traditional ecological knowledge. The traditional communities of the Brazilian Cerrado include indigenous groups (more than 80 ethnicities), quilombolas (ethnical groups predominantly constituted by slave descendants), and ribeirinhos (groups of people living in the proximities of water bodies and whose ways of life resemble those of indigenous groups). Indigenous groups, quilombolas and ribeirinhos share the characteristics of preserving ancestral culture and a cosmovision that does not separate human beings from nature, but believe in their entanglements. From a socioeconomic perspective, the traditional communities of the Brazilian Cerrado have been suffering different types of pressures from the exclusionary economic development model ongoing in the region. Since the 1960s, cattle ranches and croplands have been dominating the biome, resulting in accentuated deforestation. Between 2000 and 2012, 308,410 square kilometers of the Brazilian Cerrado were deforested (IBGE, 2015). In 2013, natural forests accounted for only 20.54% of the Brazilian Cerrado area, whilst pasturelands accounted for 29.46% and croplands for 11.8% of the area (INPE, 2013). Under this model, the traditional communities of the Cerrado are deprived from access to land and to the forest resources on which they depend (Garret & Rausch, 2016; Ganem et al., 2013; Spavorek et al., 2010). In addition to incurring in intricate social issues, deforestation results in several environmental impacts, such as forest fragmentation, biodiversity loss, forest fires, increase in aerosol concentrations, greenhouse gases emissions, soil nutrients imbalance and disturbances in the water cycle (Artaxo, 2005; Davidson et al., 2012). Considering projections of growing demand for soybean and meat production (KPMG, 2013), it is not equivocated to assume that deforestation pressures in the Brazilian Cerrado will continue to increase in the future. Thus, controlling deforestation – which will lead to securing traditional communities´ rights – is indispensable. Within this context, extractive reserves (RESEX) play a crucial role. Hence, understanding how RESEX function as a cross-scale and multi-actor approach to conservation is fundamental. For that matter, it is essential to explore how local communities, governmental actors (ICMBio, in the realm of this research) and agroindustry actors perceive outcomes and opportunities to improve activities within RESEX and environmental regulations in the Brazilian Cerrado. This PhD research will do so by employing a mixed methods approach and drawing on integrative fields that bring significant contributions to sustainability: political ecology, social-ecological systems and social innovation. " "CORTEXS - Care Organization: a Re-Thinking EXpedition in search for Sustainability" "Piet PAUWELS" "Marketing, Economics and Public Policy" "On November 1st Re-Thinking EXpedition in search for Sustainability) has been launched. The project is focused on the sustainability of the Flemish health care system, particularly in view of the growing needs for chronic and long-term care. 'Integrated care' is seen as an important new approach to realising a more demand-driven, patient centered and cost-conscious health care system. The research team works closely together with about 30 health care organisations. CORTEXS is funded by the Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT) under the Strategic Basic Research (SB0) program. The general aim of an SBO project is to contribute to new ideas and concepts, which could lead to the creation of a new generation of products, processes or services. The project received the Flanders' Care label, that is reserved for good practices that live up to the mission of measurably improving the quality of care through innovation and stimulating responsible entrepreneurship. The 4-year project has a budget of 3 million EURO. The research consortium consists of 7 partners: KU Leuven - Centre for Sociological Research, KU Leuven - Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Law, KU Leuven LUCAS - Centre for Care Research and Consultancy, TNO - Innovation Area Work & Employment, UHasselt - Research Group Patient Safety and Health Economics, Antwerp Management School, and UGent - Health Economics Unit." "Geography of Inshore Fisheries and Sustainability" "Flanders Marine Institute" "The Channel & North Sea are home to a vitally important fishing industry that is facing significant changes and challenges. Policy responses to reductions in fish stocks impact on communities that depend upon fishing, with social and economic consequences. The aim of the GIFS project is to explore, across the common priority area, the socio-economic and cultural importance of inshore fishing and to provide a demonstration project in fisheries based community regeneration." "Prospective Sustainability Assessment of Emerging Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Technologies; An integrated Approach towards Considering Environmental and Economic Life Cycle Impacts" "Jo Dewulf" "Department of Green Chemistry and Technology, Department of Sustainable Organic Chemistry and Technology, University of Geneva" "The project aims at assessing the sustainability of emerging biopharmaceutical production processes considering both environmental and economic aspects by combining Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing. New methods will be developed to estimate the required data to forecast the environmental and economic sustainability of these technologies at pilot and at full scale." "DARIAH ERIC Sustainabilty Refined" "Christophe Verbruggen" "Department of History, King's College London, Library of the Czech Academy of Sciences, University of Helsinki, French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation, Leibniz University Hannover, University of Glasgow, University of Haifa, University of Göttingen, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Sheffield, National University of Distance Education, University of Neuchâtel, University of Warsaw, CENTAR ZA DIGITALNE HUMANISTICKE NAUKE, DIGITAL RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES" "Europe has a long and rich tradition as a centre for the arts and humanities.However, the digital transformation poses challenges to the arts and humanities research landscape all over the world. Responding to these challenges the Digital Research Infrastructure for Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) was launched as a pan-European network and research infrastructure. After expansion and consolidation, which involved DARIAH's inscription on the ESFRI roadmap, DARIAH became a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) in August 2014. The DESIR project sets out to strengthen the sustainability of DARIAH and firmly establish it as a long-term leader and partner within arts and humanities communities. By DESIR's definition, sustainability is an evolving 6-dimensional process, divided into the following challenges: Dissemination: DESIR will organise a series dissemination events, including workshops in the US and Australia, to promote DARIAH tools and services and initiative collaborations. Growth: DESIR sets out to prepare the ground for establishing DARIAH membership in six new countries: the UK, Finland, Spain, Switzerland, Czech Republic and Israel. Technology: DESIR will widen the DARIAH research infrastructure in three areas, vital for DARIAH's long-term sustainability: entity-based search, scholarly content management, visualization and text analytic services. Robustness: DESIR will make DARIAH's organizational structure and governance fit for the future and develop a detailed business plan and marketing strategy Trust: DESIR will measure the acceptance of DARIAH, especially in new communities, and define mechanisms to support trust and confidence in DARIAH Education: Through training and teaching DESIR will promote the use of DARIAH tools and services The DESIR consortium is composed of core DARIAH members, representatives from potential new DARIAH members and external technical experts. It is balanced between the different European regions." "Sustainability and SDG’s - how to measure and move forward 2025-2026" "Jo Dewulf" "Department of Green Chemistry and Technology" "geen abstract"