Örjan Sjöberg

In our pursuit of Agenda 2030's Sustainable Development Goals, and the Paris Agreement, this chapter examines if markets can promote sustainable development. It discusses the challenges posited by climate change and sustainable development. Furthermore, considering their limitations, should markets as a main vehicle for sustainable development be discarded, or can their shortcomings be overcome? Can markets become sustainable in the sense of fostering sustainability outcomes?

International migration and the integration of new residents continue to be not just a key challenge but also an opportunity for nations around the world. Demographically aging nations are dependent on foreign workers to sustain their economies. Richer countries constitute beacons for upward mobility for those from more impoverished backgrounds. On the other hand, these same countries contribute to the “brain drain” that hampers the developing world. Meanwhile, migrant access, reception, and integration at destination are at the heart of policy debates and research alike.

This chapter forms the conclusion to Migration and Integration in a Post-pandemic World: Socioeconomic Opportunities and Challenges and attempts to integrate our broad knowledge of migration and integration before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. As the impacts and consequences of the virus will likely play out over a long time to come, it is at time of publication too early to definitively write post-pandemic. Our conclusion links the individual chapter contributions in this volume into the broader migration and integration literature before and during the pandemic and highlights each chapter’s unique insights into the migration and integration literature afforded by the globally critical event.

Climate, environment and social sustainability are most often theorised and empirically depicted as separate challenges. We explore the interdependence and trade-offs between the goals and suggest that decoupling must have a more prominent focus. Unlike the rapidly expanding body of quantitative goal and target correlation studies, we focus on the underlying conceptual issues. The SDGs focusing on social goals are correlated with economic growth and SDG 8 in a positive way. At the same time, increased climate emissions and ecological footprint are negatively correlated with economic growth and SDG 8. If the social goals are to be met, economic growth must continue but without it increasing the planetary footprint of humankind in the natural world. For now, at least, evidence of such needed decoupling continues to be patchy at best. We conclude with a discussion of redistribution as a possible solution.

“Sustainable cities” as a singular concept may very well be a utopian vision impossible to realise in a broader sense. In this chapter, we review the literature on urban sustainability highlighting the complexities and trade-offs between and within the 3 Es—ecology, economy and equality. In particular, we focus here on the intra-urban dimensions of density, mobility, the built environment and housing, lifestyle trends and gentrification along with social sustainability issues of crime, homelessness and community. While gains from increased size and density can be had, there are also many outcomes that depend on urban morphology and the consequences of spatial sorting. Positive outcomes generated by density and efficiency may be offset by, for instance, less sustainable construction materials or increased income inequality. In particular, rebound effects are often overlooked. Hence, it often becomes an empirical issue whether the potential for sustainability gains materialise. Furthermore, as assessed from a more holistic 3 Es’ view, where social sustainability is as important as environmental sustainability, the potential of a “sustainable city” may be a victim of trade-offs that are difficult to resolve.

Urban areas are often, and not without reason, portrayed as an opportunity to reduce environmental impacts: more effective use of land, better opportunities for the provision of public transport and less need on a per capita basis for investment in physical infrastructure. This is also the message of the literature on urban scaling. The very nature of the agglomeration economies that allow for economising on natural resources may, however, result in higher levels of per capita consumption. A major reason is that high density often translates into higher costs of space, in turn encouraging the concentration of high(er) productivity activities in major cities. As a result, spatial sorting occurs (e.g. with respect to educational attainment and incomes) and with it potentially also a differentiation of consumption patterns. In consequence, not just size and density, but also position in the urban hierarchy may need to be taken into account in assessing sustainability outcomes. To grasp the issue of urban sustainability, however, intra-urban differentiation too, will have to be considered in tandem with the inter-urban issues of boundary drawing for measurement—what we call “ontological cityism”. This is especially so if the focus shifts from the environmental to the social dimensions of sustainability, and if the trade-offs across the three pillars of sustainability are to be understood.

This chapter reviews the literature on sustainable production and consumption of tourism to map both sides of the coin. As such it focuses on the shifts (and at times trade-offs) between different classes of sustainability concerns, and the variegated emphasis on the local versus the global. It concludes that the global significance of some local circumstances (indeed disorders) is yet to receive the attention it deserves.

In this article, Lin Lerpold and Örjan Sjöberg discuss one of the most pressing issues with COVID-19, that the effects are not impacting equally across socio-economic groups. Studying the integration of immigrants within the hospitality sector, the authors show that not only are these groups overrepresented among those immediately affected, they are also vulnerable for losing their jobs more long-term when their employers struggle to bounce back.

This chapter reviews the case for structural adjustment in reforming socialist economies, noting in particular the need to forestall high levels of inflation. It argues that the importance of macro-economic stability extends beyond keeping economic aggregates in check. The chapter addresses the exigency of institutional adjustment, arguing that the lowering of transaction costs is as important to the success of reform as are the more frequently voiced concerns about production costs not properly reflecting comparative advantage. It highlights the reasons for lacklustre performance on part of centrally planned economies, and the implications for reform. As reforms were initiated, repressed inflation came out in the open, additionally fuelled in many an instance by drastic shortfalls of government revenue and hence increasing budget deficits. Macro-economic stability is a necessary but not sufficient condition; institutional adjustment is also a component crucial to the success of reform in formerly centrally planned economies.