Ethiopia is challenged by a strong development progress. Currently the major issues in Ethiopia, as a least developed country with a rapid urbanisation, include a high level of income inequality, lack of formal employment opportunities, deeply rooted poverty, tenure insecurity, poor infrastructure, and limited access to electricity and energy. The Erasmus+ Project "Social Inclusion and Energy Management for Informal Urban Settlements", enables European and Ethiopian universities to develop new university courses integrating the aspects of sustainability for future professionals in the field of architecture, urban planning but also social sciences. The paper investigates the respective situation in Ethiopia, and demonstrates the interactions of six selected Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations highly linked with this topic. These six Sustainable Development Goals were identified in a participative process, involving different stakeholders like government officials, urban planners or informal settlers by interviews, focus groups, workshops and conferences. The focus is on SDG1 "No Poverty", SDG3 "Good Health and Well-being", SDG7 "Affordable and Clean Energy", SDG11 "Sustainable Cities and Communities", SDG13 "Climate Action" and SDG15 "Life on Land". In the context of Ethiopian cities, energy production and distribution have been highly centralised under state entities and the scope for exploring local/business driven and decentralised energy systems has been limited. Transitions can be implemented towards sustainability and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, if collective identification and structuring of issues along with collective envisioning of the future, and the interactions and trade-offs of different goals are taken into consideration.

The market for electrical devices still continues to increase all over the world and as a consequence the quantity of waste in the category of electronics rises. A huge proportion of the electronic waste is exported from the industrial countries to developing countries, in order to save costs, and also because of too few recycling plants in industrial countries. The significant environmental and social problem in this context is that the electronic devices are mostly recycled in informal plants. Thereby the burden for the people as well as the environment increases because e-waste includes a lot of toxic substances. The negative impacts are already obvious in countries of importation. This paper will illustrate this on the basis of the case study in Ghana in Africa. The problem is evident, and research, business as well as governments aim to counter this development. The paper will investigate the current approaches employed for solving the e-waste problem with respect to legal options and also regarding voluntary agreements and the provision of information about the actual situation to the consumers.

Sustainability reports, as a voluntary measure of companies and organisations, are an important instrument for supporting corporate social responsibility (CSR). The most recognized guidelines for sustainability reporting are the Global Reporting Initiative Guidelines. They aim to enable a reasonable and balanced presentation of a company's performance regarding economic, environmental, and social aspects, to all stakeholders. The paper selects the sustainability reports from four companies from the food industry, two from Europe and two from Latin America. A qualitative analysis highlights to which degree sustainability reporting in Europe and Latin America shows different results.

Ethiopia is rapidly urbanising. Similar to other urban areas in developing countries, major issues in Ethiopia include a high level of income inequality, lack of formal employment opportunities and deeply rooted poverty, tenure insecurity, poor infrastructure, and limited access to electricity and energy. Frequently settlers end up in impoverished urban squatters and slums which do not offer them even the most basic infrastructure and hence lack to provide them with the perspectives they came for. Onward migration to farer off destinations such as the EU member states thus often remains as sole option for those caught in such urban poverty traps. Although the issue of informal urban settlements is not new to the context of Ethiopian cities, the current rapid urban growth rates are exposing urban rental markets as well as infrastructure and energy supply to considerable pressure. The paper investigates the respective situation in Ethiopia and demonstrates some best practice examples. In the context of Ethiopian cities, energy production and distribution have been highly centralised under state entities and the scope for exploring local/business driven and decentralised systems has been limited. Transitions can be implemented towards sustainability and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals if collective identification and structuring of issues along with collective envisioning of future is provoked or facilitated.

Corporate environmental protection is nowadays no longer just a marketing tool or an annoying necessity for a good reputation, but for many companies an integrated element of the corporate culture and of doing business. In a case study of a company in Austria, this paper investigates a feasible additional advantage for corporate environmental protection in terms of a positive leverage on employee motivation. After giving an overview of the most important theoretical approaches and tools regarding corporate responsibility, incentives, and employee motivation, the influence of the environmental protection concept of Kommunalkredit Austria AG on the job motivation of its employees is analysed on the basis of a questionnaire covering all corporate responsibility related topics. The results show a spill-over effect of a company's increased social responsibility on the behaviour and performance of the employees.