Infrastructure, Green Finance, and Cyber Security: An Afternoon with Professor Naoyuki Yoshino

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Text and Photo © 2026 CM Cordeiro

It is not every day that a seminar room fills with the kind of quiet intellectual energy that makes you reach for your notebook before the speaker has even begun. Last week’s gathering at the University of Gothenburg, organised by CERGU (Centre for European Research) and CIBS (Centre for International Business Studies), School of Business, Economics and Law, was one of those occasions.

The guest of honour was Professor Emeritus Naoyuki Yoshino of Keio University, Tokyo, a Johns Hopkins-trained economist whose career spans monetary policy, infrastructure finance, green finance, and most recently, cyber security governance. Professor Yoshino holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Gothenburg, making this visit a homecoming of sorts, and has served as Dean and CEO of the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI). He is also Economic Adviser to the Republic of Palau.

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Mapping What Works: FERTITEC at ManuREsource 2026, Wageningen

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Text and Photo © 2026 CM Cordeiro

About ManuREsource

ManuREsource is an international conference dedicated to the exchange of knowledge and experience among researchers, policymakers, industry actors, and farmers on the policy measures, technologies, and valorisation strategies associated with livestock manure management. Organised by the Flemish Coordination Centre for Manure Processing (VCM), Ghent University, and Inagro, the conference series has grown steadily since its first edition in 2013 into one of Europe’s foremost gatherings in the field of circular nutrient management.

The conference rotates between Belgium and the Netherlands, reflecting the close collaboration between Flemish and Dutch expertise in addressing manure surplus challenges. Recent editions include:

Edition Year Location
4th 2019 Hasselt, Belgium
5th 2021/2022 ’s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands
6th 2024 Antwerp, Belgium
7th (current) 2026 Ede/Wageningen, the Netherlands

Each edition has built on the last, broadening its scope from manure surplus management to encompass innovations in treatment technology, nutrient recovery, valorisation for energy and food production, regulatory policy, and sustainability assessment. The 2026 edition, held 4–5 March at Hotel Reehorst in Ede/Wageningen, with an optional field trip on 6 March to local manure processing installations, continued this tradition under the central theme: manure as a resource.

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Bridging the Gap from Pilots to Practice in Circular Water Management

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Abstract

A new study published in Frontiers in Earth Science presents a data-driven framework for understanding how circular water technologies can successfully transition from pilot projects to widespread regional implementation. Using computational text analysis of 372,856 tokens from EU policy documents, practitioner forums, and five Interreg Baltic Sea Region projects, the research identifies three critical coordination mechanisms, structural, knowledge, and temporal, that enable effective governance-technology integration across multiple scales. The findings reveal a temporal shift in practitioner discourse from technical optimization toward strategic governance framing, highlighting the importance of adaptive coordination processes in scaling circular water innovations.

Addressing a Critical Challenge in Environmental Governance

The Baltic Sea Region has emerged as a major arena for circular water innovation, with EU investment exceeding €20.5 million in recent years. Yet despite technically successful pilots, moving from demonstration projects to broader regional implementation remains challenging. Our newly published research tackles this persistent ”pilot-to-practice” problem by examining how governance and technology integration is actually framed, discussed, and implemented across policy, practitioner, and project contexts.

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Mobile Monitoring Reveals Industrial Odor Hotspots in Inner Mongolia

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Graphical abstract showing mobile monitoring of odor and VOCs in industrial parks

Industrial odor pollution remains one of the most challenging environmental issues to address. Unlike visible emissions or easily quantifiable pollutants, odors are transient, spatially variable, and often escape detection by conventional fixed-site monitoring stations. A new study published in Atmospheric Environment demonstrates how mobile monitoring technology can transform our understanding of industrial odor emissions, and points toward more effective regulatory strategies.

The Challenge: Persistent Odor Complaints Despite Low VOC Levels

The Tuoketuo Industrial Park in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, hosts a dense cluster of biopharmaceutical, coal-chemical, and food processing facilities. Despite reporting relatively low total volatile organic compound (TVOC) concentrations, the region has experienced a 15% year-on-year increase in odor complaints. This disconnect between measured pollutant levels and community experience highlights a fundamental limitation of mass-based air quality metrics.

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Digital tools for nutrient value chain management in circular wastewater and manure systems

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As dairy farms move toward more data-driven nutrient management, near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is emerging as a practical tool. It enables rapid, non-destructive analysis of slurry nutrients directly on-farm, reducing the need for frequent laboratory testing.

However, one key challenge is often underestimated, temperature. Slurry in barns, tanks, and lagoons rarely stays at a constant temperature. It changes with seasons, time of day, and position in the manure management chain. These fluctuations can distort NIR spectra and, if not properly understood, lead to unreliable nutrient predictions.

A recent article in Microchemical Journal by Wang et al. (2025) addresses this issue using advanced spectral methods to examine how temperature reshapes the NIR signature of dairy slurry and what this means for real-time sensing in practice.

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How Microalgae Combat Antibiotic Resistance in Wastewater

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Microalgae-based wastewater treatment

Our new study, now published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, reveals promising insights into using microalgae to tackle one of agriculture’s most pressing environmental challenges: the spread of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in livestock wastewater.

The Challenge

Nearly 55% of antibiotics used in China are applied in livestock farming, creating a major pathway for antibiotic resistance genes to enter the environment through farm wastewater. These genes pose serious risks to ecosystems and human health, making their removal from wastewater a critical priority. Similar risks are emerging in aquaculture, where high-nutrient effluents containing antibiotic residues and resistance genes threaten surrounding waters, highlighting the need for robust, nature-based treatment solutions across both terrestrial and aquatic production systems.

An Innovative Approach

Our international research team, including collaborators from RISE Research Institutes of Sweden and China’s Agro-Environmental Protection Institute (AEPI) under China´s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA), investigated how the microalga Chlorella pyrenoidosa responds to environmental stressors while treating dairy farm wastewater. Specifically, we examined the combined effects of lead stress and gibberellin (a plant hormone) stimulation on microalgal performance, bacterial communities, and ARG removal.

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From Text to Networks: How AntConc and InfraNodus Map the AI-Policy-Governance Nexus

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  This article reports a methods-focused reading of a curated policy corpus that examines how artificial intelligence (AI), when situated within sustainability-oriented regulation, may be associated with shifts in corporate governance toward stakeholder accountability. The analysis combines corpus linguistics (AntConc) with semantic network techniques (InfraNodus) to move from dense legal language toward a transparent account of recurring concepts and their relations. While any single method has limits, the combined approach is intended to provide both textual evidence and a system-level view, so that substantive claims remain cautious and testable.

Methodology: AntConc and InfraNodus complementarities

  The corpus comprises six (+1 text annex) open-access instruments that, taken together, appear to structure contemporary discussions of AI and sustainability governance across jurisdictions: the EU AI Act, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the U.S. SEC Climate-Related Disclosure Rule, the EU Green Deal, the OECD AI Principles, and the ASEAN Guide on AI Governance and Ethics. Source PDFs were converted to UTF-8 text, running headers and pagination were removed, article and annex references were preserved, hyphenation was normalized, and domain acronyms (AI, ESRS, SEC, CSRD) were retained to reduce semantic loss.

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Wings, Wetlands, and Soil: The Urdaibai Bird Centre and the Hidden Connections of Ecosystem Health

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Photo and Text © Gorka Nadal and C.M. Cordeiro 2025.

October 9, 2025 | Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, Spain

During the second day of the iCOSHELLs annual meeting in Bilbao, consortium members visited the Urdaibai Bird Centre, a world-class facility dedicated to avian conservation and environmental education. This visit, expertly organized by our host partner GAIA, revealed the intricate connections between bird populations, wetland ecosystems, and the soil health initiatives at the heart of our project.

The Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve: A Conservation Success Story

Designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1984, the Urdaibai region represents a remarkable example of how protected areas can balance environmental conservation with human well-being and economic development. Spanning the coastal and inland areas of Biscay in Northern Spain, this reserve encompasses diverse ecosystems, from coastal marshlands and estuaries to native broadleaf forests and traditional agricultural landscapes.

Research by Castillo-Eguskitza and colleagues (2017) demonstrates that the biosphere reserve designation has yielded tangible conservation benefits while supporting local communities. The study found that compared to adjacent non-protected areas, Urdaibai has achieved better conservation of native forests and rural landscapes, slowed the abandonment of traditional agricultural and forestry practices, and maintained higher employment in the primary sector. The designation has also limited large-scale urban development while supporting sustainable economic growth and preserving the biodiversity and ecosystem services crucial for local well-being.

These findings challenge the narrative that conservation necessarily restricts economic development, instead demonstrating that well-managed protected areas can foster sustainable prosperity.

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Discovering Laida Beach: Where Soil Health Meets Coastal Conservation in the iCOSHELLs Basque Living Lab

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Photo and Text © Gorka Nadal and C.M. Cordeiro 2025.

October 9, 2025 | Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, Spain

As part of the iCOSHELLs project’s second annual meeting in Bilbao, participants from across Europe embarked on a field visit to one of Spain’s most remarkable coastal landscapes: Laida Beach in the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve. Hosted by our partner GAIA in Bilbao, Spain, this excursion highlighted the critical connections between soil health, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable land management in coastal ecosystems.

About iCOSHELLs

The INNOVATIVE CO-CREATION SOIL HEALTH LIVING LABs (iCOSHELLs) project, led by RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, represents a groundbreaking EU Horizon Europe initiative dedicated to restoring Europe’s degraded soils. With 60–70% of European soils classified as unhealthy due to pollution, urbanization, and intensive agriculture exacerbated by climate change, the €12 million project brings together 36 partners across Europe to develop, test, and scale innovative soil recovery solutions through six Soil Health Living Labs.

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Europe Forum Insights 2024/5: Security, Competitiveness, Sustainability

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Photo and Text © C.M. Cordeiro 2025.

Integrating Security, Competitiveness, and Sustainability: Insights from Europe Forum Debates 2024/5 and EU Projects

Introduction

Europe faces multiple, overlapping challenges: geopolitical instability, ecological pressures, and concerns over long-term economic competitiveness. These issues are often framed in policy debates as competing priorities. At the Europe Forum events in Turku (2024 and 2025), panelists frequently posed the question of whether EU resources should be directed toward defense and security or toward sustainable growth, cohesion, and agriculture [1]–[4]. This article explores how such framings may overstate the trade-offs. Drawing on Forum debates and ongoing EU projects, it examines the extent to which security, competitiveness, and sustainability can be understood as interdependent dimensions of a coherent European agenda.

1. Security as Competitiveness

At the 2024 Forum session on European competitiveness, it was emphasized that competitiveness is inseparable from security [1]. The upcoming EU Council Presidency was noted as placing emphasis on defense industry financing, border resilience, and energy independence. This reflects a growing recognition that secure borders, reliable energy systems, and resilient food and digital infrastructures underpin Europe’s ability to compete internationally.

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