Entrepreneurship has been increasingly promoted as a means to achieve women’s empowerment in the pursuit of gender equal societies by international development organizations, NGO’s as well as national and local governments across the world. Against this, the paper explores the role and influence of multi-actor engagement on successful empowerment of women based on a case study of Kudumbashree program in a regional context of Kerala, in South India. Our objective is to examine the women empowerment outcomes of the Kudumbashree initiatives, implemented within a multi-actor engagement framework supportive of women’s empowerment through capacity building and social inclusion programs. The case study demonstrates ‘how multiple-level engagements help enhance women’s development and support broad sustainable social change, in view of their sensitivity to the embeddedness of women’s agency under specific socio-political and cultural contexts’. We find that Kudumbashree programs, through its multi-actor engagement, strives for an equilibrium between social change through policy and regulatory change (top down) and social change via mobilizing the people (bottom-up). From a policy angle, the key learnings from the successful outcomes of Kudumbashree may be considered for designing rural and urban community development programs with a focus on the multidimensional empowerment as well as social and economic inclusion of women and other marginalized communities.

Globally, climate change impacts are manifold, severely affecting the agriculture sector. Climate-resilient agriculture (CRA) is viewed as a panacea for overcoming the adverse effects of climate change on agriculture. This article critically reviews the literature on CRA to delineate the emerging patterns of climate-resilient agriculture. It explores multiple dimensions of CRA as related to practices, technologies, policies, innovations and interventions across different parts of the world. In the end, a schematic approach towards undertaking empirical research on CRA in the Indian context is presented. The review finds that, globally, CRA practices mainly include systematic strategies for management of critical inputs, namely, land and water, cropping systems and livelihood management. It emerges that innovations and institutions have a crucial role in accelerating the rate of adoption of CRA practices. The article highlights the need for undertaking more empirical research to get a deeper understanding of the emerging patterns of CRA in the Indian context.

This study focuses on the shift to a circular economy (CE) in the textile, apparel, and fashion (TAF) sectors, which generate tons of waste annually. Thus, embracing CE practices is essential for contributing to UN Sustainable Development Goals. This study employs a mixed-methods approach, integrating PRISMA for systematic literature selection, BERTopic modeling and AI-driven SDG mapping, and case study analysis to explore emerging CE themes, implemented circular practices, and systemic barriers. Machine-learning-based SDG mapping reveals strong linkages to SDG 9 and SDG 12, emphasizing technological advancements, industrial collaborations, and circular business models. Moderately explored SDGs, namely, SDG 8, SDG 6, and SDG 7, highlight research on labor conditions, water conservation, and clean energy integration. Reviewing 655 peer-reviewed papers, the BERTopic modeling extracted six key themes, including sustainable recycling, circular business models, and consumer engagement, whereas case studies highlighted regulatory frameworks, stakeholder collaboration, and financial incentives as critical enablers. The findings advance institutional theory by demonstrating how certifications, material standards, and regulations drive CE adoption, reinforcing SDG 12 and SDG 16. The natural resource-based view is extended by showing that technological resources alone are insufficiently aligned with SDG 9. Using the Antecedents–Decisions–Outcomes framework, this study presents a structured, AI-driven roadmap for scaling CE in the TAF industry, addressing systemic barriers, and supporting global sustainability goals, highlighting how multistakeholder collaboration, digital traceability, and inclusive governance can improve the impact of CE. The results recommend that CE strategies should be aligned with net-zero targets, carbon credit systems, and block-chain-based supply chains.

This paper examines the influence of important socio-economic, institutional/policy level factors in determining the adoption/non-adoption of rubber-integrated farming systems in traditional and non-traditional rubber-growing regions in India. The empirical analysis is based on a survey of rubber growers in the traditional rubber regions of Kerala (south India) and the non-traditional rubber regions of Assam, Meghalaya, and Tripura (north east India). In sharp contrast to Kerala, where smallholder responses toward adoption of rubber-integrated farming systems have been lukewarm, the emerging rubber economies (most of which are tribal communities) of north east (NE) India have shown interest in adopting rubber as an integrated farming system along with pre-existing land-use livelihood activities. The study clearly demonstrates contrasting empirical evidence of adoption of rubber-integrated farm-livelihood systems in the rubber-growing regions in Kerala and the NE states in India. The contrasting scenarios of adoption of rubber-integrated farming systems are mostly explained by region-specific factors dominated by socio-economic, institutional variables, and policy-level constraints, as also revealed by multivariate analysis. By and large, the findings of the study have significant bearing on the socio-economic outcomes and the existing institutional development paradigm underlying the rubber-development programmes introduced in India since independence. The study shows that the existing institutional arrangements and policies, which evolved historically to facilitate rubber area expansion in the traditional regions (including Kerala), have been highly instrumental in perpetuating rubber farming as a monoculture system. However, such an institutional mechanism proves to be highly redundant in the context of the NE states which are otherwise diverse in terms of integrated farm-livelihood systems and shifting cultivation.

Provisioning of water and sanitation services has become one of the key determinants of SDGs. This review focuses on the trends in water and sanitation services and reforms in India and Ghana over the last two decades. The findings reveal that access to water has improved in India and Ghana at 81.5 and 92.7%, respectively. However, access to sanitation continues to be a challenge in both countries, with the currently reported coverage being 59.5% and 18.5%, respectively. The index of sustainable development goal (SDG) performance of Ghana and India stands at 65.4 and 61.9 with global rankings of 100 and 117, respectively. The adverse impacts of poor access to sanitation increasingly reflect on rising numbers of population suffering from water-borne diseases. From the policy perspective, the paper highlights the need for framing pro-poor water and sanitation policies; focusing on women and girls’ education; promoting affordable water and sanitation services; promoting collaboration of stakeholders involved in the rural water and sanitation sectors; and increasing budgetary allocations by local governments.