Dear Colleagues,

As we draw closer to the end of the first year of this global pandemic, we have suffered an enormous social, medical, and political change. It would be correct to say that most of us have never experienced a change such as this in our lives. Our youth are kept indoors, preventing socialisation. Children are schooled from home. The elderly are isolated. World oil prices have crashed and recovered. Supply chains have been scrutinised, political relationships and alliances have been tested and shifted. The natural and built environment have been affected. Medical tragedies and triumphs have occurred. All of these changes have played out within a shifting international arena, where isolationism is becoming the new norm in many parts of the world.

Given such shifts, the purpose of this Special Issue of Sustainability is to capture the global pandemic year from a sustainability perspective. The scope of the issue will be responses to the pandemic, from the perspectives of any and all disciplines. The issue is purposely designed to attract publications from a diverse range of disciplines, from medical to political, legal to scientific, and everything in between. The focus of the issue is establishing within the literature how we have responded to this first year in the pandemic—socially, culturally, medically, legally, scientifically, etc., within the sphere of sustainability. There are many definitions of sustainability, and therefore, in this Special Issue, the definition of sustainability is given its widest possible meaning. In line with the broad scope of Sustainability, papers will be considered within (but not confined to) the following areas:

• Challenges relating to sustainability as part of, or arising from, the global pandemic;
• Socioeconomic, scientific, and integrated approaches to sustainable development and sustainable responses;
• Zoonoses and sustainability;
• Sustainability of human and animal population interactions;
• Pandemic, resource use, and sustainability;
• Impact of PPE use and disposal on sustainability.
  

Dr. Tina Soliman Hunter
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• pandemic
• COVID-19
• zoonoses
• socioeconomic
• global challenges
• scientific response
• consumption
• policy
• laws
• health
• energy sustainability
• smart energy
• energy security
• resilience
• logistics
• supply chain
• gas
• environmental pollution
• food security
• migration
• borders
• mobility
• urban use
• elderly
• nursing homes
• sustainable energy production
• tourism
• international students
• universities
• adaptation
• World Health Organization
• vaccination
• GDP
• political change
• vulnerability
• sustainable education
• social services
• consumers
• socio-spatial
• youth
• manufacturing
• exercise
• human behavior