Increase 2023

This book includes the proceedings of the 3rd International Congress on Engineering and Sustainability in the XXI CEntury, INCREaSE 2023. INCREaSE is a congress with the aim to bring together valuable and novel scientific contributions that address the critical issues of renewable energy, sustainable building, sustainable manufacturing, sustainable food production and other sustainability science and engineering topics that have an impact in this diverse and fast-changing research area, both in academia and industry. This 3rd edition of INCREaSE was held during July 5-7, 2023, in Faro, Portugal, organized by the Institute of Engineering and hosted by University of Algarve. The areas to be covered were: • Big data and data analytics applied to sustainability; • Climate change and mitigation, carbon reduction; • Combined heat and power and district heating systems; • Control and optimization of renewable energy systems; • Energy and environmental assessment in buildings and cities; • Food loss and food waste solutions; • Food safety and quality engineering; • Information technology and artificial intelligence applied to sustainability; • Nanoelectronic, nanomachining, and new nanomaterials; • Smart buildings, smart cities, smart districts, smart countryside; • Sustainability in water management; • Sustainable building technologies; • Sustainable development and circular economy; • Sustainable energy generation and management; • Sustainable food processing and packaging; • Sustainable manufacturing and maintenance processes and technology; • Sustainable technologies for risk mitigations; • Sustainable transport, smart vehicles and smart roads; and • Thermo fluids modelling and experiments for sustainability. High quality and unpublished content is an essential feature for all included papers. Moreover, the Organizing Committee of the conference guarantees that contributions were subjected to an appropriate level of reviewing process.

Grenada’s economy was hit hard by the pandemic, with a decline in real output of 14 percent in 2020 from both a collapse of tourism-related activities and the suspension of in-person classes at Saint George’s University (SGU). Growth in 2021 is estimated to have partly recovered to 5.6 percent, driven by construction and agriculture. The authorities’ policy response helped mitigate the pandemic’s impact through containment measures, increased health and social spending, and an expanded public investment program (including to build resilience to natural disasters). Central government debt rose to 70 percent of GDP in 2021 (from 59 percent in 2019) and the external position has worsened. The financial sector has so far weathered the crisis well.

Despite starting as one of the poorest countries in the mid-1980s, Vietnam has achieved rapid developmental progress, reaching lower middle-income status in 2010. In line with rapid economic growth, Vietnam has achieved impressive progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) during this time. This paper sheds light on some elements of Vietnam’s success story, highlighting crucial policies in education and electricity sectors. It undertakes a forward-looking costing exercise that focusses on five sectors – education, health, roads, water, and electricity infrastructure. Achieving the remaining SDGs in Vietnam will be a challenge, with total annual additional spending needs in the 5 subsectors estimated at 7 percent of GDP by 2030.

Governments play a critical role in the economies of Europe and Central Asia, where government expenditures are close to 40 percent of gross domestic product and the public sector accounts for nearly 27 percent of total employment, which is almost twice the global average. The public sector often attracts some of the best educated workers in the region. And support for a larger public sector is increasing due to aging populations and their growing health care and long-term care needs, rising inequality and greater support for redistribution, and increasing expenditures as governments address the challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis. The significant role that government plays underscores the importance of the quality of governance in determining productivity and growth and effectively responding to the region’s economic and social challenges. Digital technology and the data revolution offer the potential to increase efficiency, transparency, responsiveness, and citizen trust, directly impacting the quality of government. Across the world, the quality of government is increasingly informed by the extent to which governments harness digital tools and GovTech to optimize management, service delivery, and overall state capacity. Technology and data are also key for fostering collaboration between governments and civil society to improve public sector efficiency and service delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the costs associated with delaying digitalization and GovTech implementation and the opportunities that lie in public sector modernization.

This note analyzes the trajectory of the benchmark and its implications for the effort required of countries to remain on-track or get on-track toward achieving the goals and targets of the Malabo Declaration by 2025. It also analyzes the change in the overall score obtained by different countries between the 2018 and 2020 BRs by decomposing the contribution of different indictors to the change. This helps to explain why fewer countries were on-track in the 2020 BR compared to the 2018 BR. The note concludes with a look at the potential challenges countries may face, most notably those brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and prospects for them to remain or get on-track in future BRs.