The coronavirus pandemic has reinforced the need for sustainable, smart tourism and local travel, with rural destinations gaining in their popularity and leading to increased potential of smart rural tourism. However, these processes need adjustments to the current trends, incorporating new transformative business concepts and marketing approaches. In this paper we provide real life examples of new marketing approaches, together with new business models within the context of the use of new digital technologies. Via hermeneutic research approach, consisting of the secondary analysis of the addressed subject of smart rural tourism in adversity of the COVID-19 and 6 semi-structured interviews, the importance of technology is underscored in transforming rural tourism to smart rural tourist destinations. The respondents in the interview section were chosen based on their direct involvement in the presented examples and geographical location, i.e. France, Slovenia and Spain, where presented research examples were developed, concretely within European programmes, i.e. Interreg, Horizon and Rural Development Programme (RDP). Interviews were taking place between 2022 and 2023 in person, email or via Zoom. This two-phased study demonstrates that technology is important in transforming rural tourism to smart tourist destinations and that it ushers new approaches that seem particularly useful in applying to rural areas, creating a rural digital innovation ecosystem, which acts as s heuristic rural tourist model that fosters new types of tourism, i.e. smart rural tourism.

This research seeks to identify the value of a few common factors determining the speed of economic growth in Baltic states and analyzes their impact in detail on Latvia’s lagging. Latvia’s economic starting point after regaining independence because of the collapse of the Soviet Union was at least comparable to its neighbors. Still, after the implementation of liberal reforms towards a free market’ economy and 20 years of operation as an EU full member, Latvia is lagging in growth, prosperity, and innovation. Within the analysis, this scientific paper pays special attention to the three less discussed factors, namely, the impact of post-Soviet mind-set effects as a part of local innovation culture, lasting since regaining independence in 1991; the importance of the availability of talent pull, its density, diversity, and accessibility; and readiness and capability to capture external knowledge and technology adoption. The overall approach is the systemic assessment of the national innovation system and/or innovation ecosystem, trying to understand the differences between these two models. Research is performed by analysis of the performance of the local innovation ecosystem in connection with export- and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policies. The authors present a novel method for visually representing economic growth and its application in analyzing process development within transitional economic nations. The study uses an analytical and synthetical literature review. It offers a new GDP data visualization method useful for monitoring economic development and forecasting potential economic crises—the outcomes from aggregative literature analysis in a consolidated concept are provided for required talent policy proposals. The post-Soviet mindset is seen as a heritage and devious underdog that has left incredibly diverse consequences on today’s society, power structures, economic growth potential, and the emergence of healthy, well-managed, and sustainable innovation ecosystems. The post-Soviet mindset is a seemingly hidden and, at the same time, an intriguing factor that has a significant impact on the desire to make and implement the right decisions related to innovation, education, and other policies promoting business development. The key outcome of the article is that sociocultural aspects and differences in innovation culture led to a slow-down of Latvia’s economic growth compared to Estonia’s and Lithuania’s slightly more successful economic reforms.

This study investigated the changing land use patterns and their impacts on ecosystem in the Teesta River Basin of northwestern Bangladesh. Although anthropocentric land use patterns, including agricultural land use, settlements, built areas, and waterbody loss, have been increasing in the Nilphamari district, by negatively affecting local ecosystems, they have not been identified by prior research. Limitations of contemporary literature motivated me to work on this crucial ground in the Teesta River Basin in Northwestern Bangladesh. This study applied a mixed research approach to identify the study objectives. Firstly, the land use and land cover (LULC) changes which occurred between 2000 and 2020 were detected using satellite imagery and supervised classification method. In addition to the detection of LULC changes, the study explored the people’s perceptions and experiences about the ecosystem changes resulted from the LULC changes over the last 20 years, conducting stakeholders’ consultations and household surveys utilizing a semi-structured questionnaire. The findings indicated that waterbodies in Nilphamari district have significantly decreased from 378 km² in 2000 to 181 km² in 2020. In the same way, the vegetation coverage has reduced 187 km² between the years 2000 and 2020. On the contrary, agricultural lands (croplands) have increased from 595 km² to 905 km² and settlements have increased from 81 km² to 206 km² between the years 2000 and 2020. From the chi-square test, it was found a significant association between ecosystem change and biodiversity loss. It was further identified that waterbody decreases have significant impacts on aquatic ecosystems. The results of this study also indicated that due to the introduction of foreign tree species, local and native species have been significantly decreasing over the time. This study emphasizes the non-anthropocentric and inclusive land use policy implications for protecting life on land and preserving the aquatic ecosystem in Bangladesh.

Currently, there is a unique situation in the global economy, industrial eras coexist together, there is interaction and transformation of financial systems simultaneously within the framework of Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0. New, digital resources are entering the economy, intellectual capital is becoming virtual, artificial intelligence is increasingly finding its application in the structure of financial support. Financial intermediation in developing countries is also subject to global trends, the active development of new instruments for developing economies is especially important. The aim of the study is to identify effective ways to develop financial intermediation in Industry 5.0 for the economies of developing countries. Based on the results of the study on the development of financial institutions mediation revealed a problem related to the lack of reasonable tools that could be used to improving the efficiency of the financial intermediaries market, proposed the main directions of such a process: mobilization of savings, distribution financial assets, payment system, risk management and control over market agents involved in financial operations.

The national park with Chinese characteristics is the highest level of protection of a kind of natural protection, its establishment marks the park will implement the strictest ecological protection means. It is of great value to construct the utilization system of national park resources under the new natural protected area system in the new era to avoid the misunderstanding of “ecological protection only” and explore how to carry out the sustainable utilization of resources in the reform of national park system and mechanism. According to the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and Delphi method, the evaluation framework, indicators, reference standards and weights of resource utilization under the national park system were determined in combination with the requirements of constructing the protected natural area system and the total value of resource ecosystem services (including harvest value, existence value and future value). Based on the application research of Bawangling zone of Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park, the optimal resource utilization system in the future was proposed, and two optimization strategies of ecological adjustment of resource utilization system and construction of suitable resource utilization system were put forward.

As an important ecosystem type in the coastal zone, mangroves have important ecological functions, such as maintaining coastal biodiversity, preventing wind and consolidating the coast, promoting silt and building land. It is of great significance to understand the protected status of mangroves in the context of climate change and rapid urbanization. Based on the mangrove classification data from remote sensing interpretation, through vacancy analysis, the in-situ protection status of mangroves in China is analyzed. The results show that the total area of mangroves distributed in China is 264 km² (excluding the statistical data of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan), of which 61.4% are protected in natural reserves. In terms of the main provinces where mangroves are distributed, the mangrove area distributed in Hainan Province is small but the protection proportion is high, while the mangrove area distributed in Guangxi and Guangdong Province is large but the proportion of protected areas is relatively low. Among the three mangrove types, Rhizophora apiculate-Xylocarpus granatum and Rhizophora stylosa-Bruguiera gymnorrhiza had high proportions (>90%) covered by reserves, but relatively small areas. In contrast, Kandelia candel-Aegiceras corniculatum-Avicennia marina had relatively low reserve coverage (52.6%), but a large area. The study puts forward the key areas of mangrove distribution outside the nature reserve, and suggests that they should be protected by delimiting ecological protection red lines.