Eleonora Santos

This article examines how time-limited, project-based public funding instruments (the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), EU LIFE, and Erasmus+) mediate rural cooperation. Integrating policy instrumentation, innovation systems, and territorial resilience literature, it proposes latent territorial resilience: functionally effective yet institutionally fragile cooperative arrangements that deliver outcomes without consolidating into stable organizational forms. A multiple-case design examines 13 purposively selected Portuguese cooperative initiatives, with four illustrative shadow cases (Greece, Austria, Germany, and Hungary). Three candidate mediation mechanisms are specified: functional coordination below institutional thresholds, policy-induced misalignment and exclusion, and informal substitution of governance functions. The first is documented in all 13 cases, the third in ten, and the second in seven, all of them on one clause of the PRR notices, which is not recorded as having blocked formalization in any case. All 13 cases are rated Low or Medium on institutional consolidation. Eleven cases follow a trajectory linked to the project (A), in which joint activity is documented only within the funded period; two (Fruta Feia and Adopt an Olive Tree) continue beyond, or without, project funding (B); and none follow a consolidated trajectory (C). The post-funding phase is documented only for Fruta Feia. CAP-funded support is documented for three cases, and only one of them (Cultivar & Cooperar, under LEADER) involves a cooperation measure, so this study takes project-based public funding, not the CAP alone, as its object. The patterns are consistent with, but do not demonstrate, a role for such funding in institutional fragility. A provisional typology of cooperation trajectories is proposed, and conditions the CAP 2028–2034 proposal would need to meet are discussed.

Achieving sustainable urban water management is increasingly critical amid climate change, water scarcity, population growth, and intensifying pressure on freshwater resources. Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) has emerged as a promising integrated framework to evaluate the holistic sustainability of municipal wastewater reuse systems by combining environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC), and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA). This paper presents a critical narrative review synthesizing current evidence on LCSA applications specifically in urban municipal wastewater reuse contexts—encompassing non-potable urban, agricultural, and potable reuse—and identifying which configurations deliver genuine sustainability benefits, where major methodological shortcomings persist, and how the field can advance toward more robust, policy-relevant practice. The evidence base was assembled through structured searches in Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, screened from over 300 references to 25 peer-reviewed studies retained for in-depth analysis. Among the retained studies, positive outcomes were most often reported under low-carbon energy grids, short transport distances, and appropriate reuse-type matching: hybrid decentralized systems were associated with overall sustainability scores up to 4.8 times higher than conventional supply, while cluster-scale systems were associated with reductions in global warming potential of 15–40%. Persistent pitfalls include weak pillar integration, an underdeveloped social dimension, inconsistent system boundaries, and insufficient consideration of absolute sustainability. In response, this paper proposes the RENEW-LCSA Framework (Renewable Water-Oriented Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment Framework)—a practical six-step operational approach incorporating reuse-type-specific Social LCA indicators, explicit absolute sustainability assessment against the Water Scarcity Index (WSI) and local carbon budgets, and evidence-based integration of Nature-Based Solutions (NbSs). Three paradigmatic cases—Windhoek (Namibia), Singapore (NEWater), and Los Angeles County (USA)—illustrate the framework’s systematic application. By moving beyond optimistic narratives, this review advances the credibility of LCSA as a decision-support tool for safe, equitable, and circular urban water management, contributing to SDG 6 and the European Water Reuse Regulation (2020/741).

European sustainability transitions are increasingly defined by the convergence of blue, green, and circular economy agendas. Traditionally analysed and governed in isolation, these domains generate important interdependencies, trade-offs, and coordination challenges that remain insufficiently understood. Drawing on the multi-level perspective (MLP) and recent advances in multi-system dynamics, this article introduces the Resource Infrastructure Economy (RIE) as a novel integrative framework. The RIE differs from existing multi-system frameworks by explicitly integrating marine governance as a full socio-technical regime, theorising regulatory-driven regime coupling as a distinct transition pathway, and foregrounding the constitutive role of shared physical and digital infrastructures in shaping value creation, path dependencies, and distributional outcomes. The RIE conceptualises contemporary European transitions as processes of deep regime coupling and infrastructural integration, whereby energy, marine, and material regimes become tightly coordinated through shared physical and digital infrastructures and assertive regulatory steering. Through a systematic integrative literature review (58 core publications selected from over 450 records following PRISMA guidelines, analysed using abductive thematic analysis with MAXQDA 26 software) and comparative analysis of six countries—Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway—the study reveals persistent structural gaps between the three agendas alongside emerging patterns of pairwise and triadic regime coupling. While Northern and Central European frontrunners demonstrate more advanced infrastructural coordination, Southern peripheral regions face greater difficulties in governance integration and just transition outcomes. The RIE framework advances sustainability transitions theory in three ways: (1) systematically integrating blue economy scholarship into multi-system analysis; (2) theorising regulatory-driven regime coupling as a distinct transition pathway; and (3) foregrounding the constitutive role of physical and digital infrastructures and environmental data systems in shaping value creation, path dependencies, and distributional outcomes. By reframing European sustainability transitions through the lens of the Resource Infrastructure Economy, this article provides a new conceptual lens to understand uneven transition geographies and offers actionable insights for more integrated and just policy coordination across the European Green Deal.

Industrial water reuse and resource recovery are essential for advancing circular economy principles in water-intensive industries. Despite technological maturity, large-scale implementation continues to lag due to high costs, effluent variability, integration challenges, and weak economic returns. Going beyond technology, this paper critically examines what truly works at scale, why most systems fail, and how to build resilient multi-stream recovery solutions. Drawing on major European demonstration projects (INCOVER, RESURGENCE, MEloDIZER) and recent literature, the paper demonstrates that multi-stream systems significantly outperform single-resource approaches. Success depends less on individual technologies and more on modular design, digital integration, sector-specific adaptation, and supportive governance. The study introduces the Industrial Circular Performance Framework (ICPF) and provides clear, actionable pathways to move from promising pilots to bankable, resilient circular industrial water systems.

Social sustainability remains the least operationalised dimension of sustainability research in tourism, particularly with regard to employment quality. Tourism growth is often assumed to generate positive social outcomes through job creation, yet limited empirical attention has been paid to whether tourism employment meets basic standards of decent work. The main objective of this study is to assess whether sustained employment growth in the Portuguese tourism sector has been accompanied by measurable improvements in employment quality, and to examine the implications of this relationship for the social sustainability of tourism development. Drawing on the International Labour Organization’s Decent Work Agenda, the study operationalises decent work as a core, though partial, dimension of social sustainability and develops a Social Sustainability Index in Tourism (SSIT). The index is constructed using longitudinal administrative labour data from the Portuguese tourism sector covering the period of 2010–2022 and integrates indicators related to employment stability, remuneration, working conditions, gender equality, and social protection through a transparent, theory-informed weighting scheme complemented by sensitivity analysis. The empirical results show that, despite substantial expansion in tourism employment, gains in job quantity were not matched by commensurate improvements in decent work outcomes. Persistent employment insecurity, low wage adequacy, and enduring gender inequalities continue to characterise the sector, indicating a structurally constrained pattern of social sustainability. The main contribution of the study lies in providing a replicable, employment-based composite indicator that enables systematic monitoring of social sustainability in tourism and empirically challenges growth-centred narratives that implicitly equate employment expansion with socially sustainable development. The SSIT is intended as a diagnostic and monitoring tool rather than a comprehensive evaluation of social sustainability, as it captures only formal employment and those dimensions of decent work observable in administrative data.

Water governance in Europe faces mounting challenges from climate change, demographic pressures, and aging infrastructure—especially in Southern regions increasingly affected by drought and institutional fragmentation. In contrast, Nordic countries such as Denmark and Sweden exhibit coherent, integrated governance systems with strong regulatory oversight. This study introduces the Water Governance Maturity Index (WGMI), a document-based assessment tool designed to evaluate national water governance across five dimensions: institutional capacity, operational effectiveness, environmental ambition, equity, and climate adaptation. Applying the WGMI to eight EU countries—four Nordic and four Southern—reveals a persistent North–South divide in governance maturity. Nordic countries consistently score in the “advanced” or “model” range, while Southern countries face systemic gaps in implementation, climate integration, and territorial inclusion. Based on these findings, the study offers actionable policy recommendations, including the establishment of independent regulators, strengthening of river basin coordination, mainstreaming of climate-water strategies, and expansion of affordability and participation mechanisms. By translating complex governance principles into measurable indicators, the WGMI provides a practical tool for benchmarking reform progress and supporting the EU’s broader agenda for just resilience and climate adaptation. Unlike broader frameworks like SDG 6.5.1, the WGMI’s document-based, dimension-specific approach provides granular, actionable insights for governance reform, enhancing its utility for EU and global policymakers.