Browse Articles

Oil and gas installations, offshore windfarms and other artificial constructions may enhance marine ecosystems and have been proposed to help meet conservation targets. A study synthesizes existing literature to reveal global patterns in their ecological effectiveness.

Exploring potential synergies of genome editing with modes of agriculture, such as agroecology, could help food security and environmental integrity.

This work shows a diagnosis technique that works for multiple cancers and features cost advantage, environmental compliance and user-friendly protocol.

Humans rely heavily on non-renewable groundwater, especially to support agricultural production. Like other depletable resources, groundwater extraction is expected to peak and subsequently decline during the twenty-first century, highlighting imminent transformations in the availability and use of water globally.

Ecosystem services provided by coral reefs to coastal communities can depend on upstream land-use change activities such as forest restoration. This study assessed the social and ecological benefits provided by different watershed interventions designed at regional and national scales in Mesoamerica.

Dario Fornara, research director of the Davines Group–Rodale Institute European Regenerative Organic Center (EROC), talks to Nature Sustainability about the making of EROC and the benefits of an integrated partnership between the private and the non-profit sectors to advance sustainability.

Hydroxylamine plays a critical role in the chemical industry, but its production currently has unfavourable environmental footprint. Now a plasma-electrochemical cascade pathway powered by electricity enables efficient hydroxylamine synthesis from ambient air and water at mild conditions.

Utilizing an epoxy-amine chemistry, the authors demonstrate a thermoset epoxy that is reprocessable and tough, achieving improved sustainability for this widely used plastic material.

Critical clean energy materials exhibit supply risks due to unbalanced cross-country production and consumption patterns. A study now maps the global distribution of mineral property rights, through foreign direct investment, to show its potential role in reducing critical materials’ supply risks.

Safety is only one side of the coin for aqueous batteries. Here the authors show a water-in-polymer electrolyte that shows a wide electrochemical window and salt recyclability, thus addressing challenges at the other side.

A growing population, climate change and the environmental impacts of conventional agricultural practices are worsening food insecurity. New research shows that use of nanofertilizers can increase food production while simultaneously decreasing the negative environmental effects of agriculture.

Deep-sea mining could provide a substantial supply of metals that we urgently need to decarbonize our society, yet its environmental impact remains intractable. Considering on-land resources remain abundant and can be extracted using well-established risk management, deep-sea mining cannot currently be justified.

A powerful technique with broad applications, operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is widely used but there is a lack of design and reporting standards. Focusing on water-splitting electrocatalysts, we propose best practices for the reproducibility, replicability and reliability of operando XAS studies.

Rice is a staple crop for much of the world’s population, but its production can be a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Supplemental nano iron oxides application can halve these emissions while boosting crop yield.

Carbon neutrality complicates the transition to sustainability due to potential adverse effects on employment and the prosperity of high-emitting sectors. This study simulated the Hungarian economy and tested various strategies for reducing CO₂ emissions, revealing that decarbonization-induced economic and job losses can be substantially limited by considering the firm-level network of supply chains.

To get the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) back on track we need to reshape our approaches to implementation, including localization. Localization done differently involves progressing beyond symbolic piecemeal efforts, prioritizing the SDGs with the greatest gains, and pluralizing interpretations and pathways for actions.

Additive manufacturing is gaining growing attention as an alternative to conventional methods, but it can support more-sustainable manufacturing processes if developed through a system-level approach. This Perspective discusses how to achieve such a holistic development of additive manufacturing systems for sustainability.

Cement is a ubiquitous material in modern construction, but produces substantial carbon emissions. Emerging technologies exist that can reduce cement’s carbon footprint, but the right strategies must be implemented ambitiously and synergistically to be effective.

Designing and implementing effective carbon offset mechanisms is a complex and challenging process. This Perspective underscores the importance of transparency across the carbon-offsetting value chain and places it as a prerequisite for efficient offset mechanisms and, ultimately, carbon emissions reduction.

Phase transitions are detrimental to the cyclability of layered oxide cathodes for next-generation sodium-ion batteries. Now, two complementary studies suggest principles on how to navigate through the vast compositional space for better electrochemical performance.