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The wastewater treatment industry contributes approximately 1.6% of greenhouse gas emissions. This Review analyses alternative wastewater treatment pathways for simultaneous CO2 capture and utilization and shows the multiple benefits of microbial electrochemical and phototrophic processes.
Resistance to antimicrobials and pesticides — collectively, biocides — undermines human health and food production. This Review assesses options for governing and promoting susceptibility to biocides to remain within the planet’s safe operating space.
The interaction between land degradation and the livelihoods of the poor is complex and conditioned by important economic, social and environmental factors. These factors are also in part responsible for the limited success of economic growth policies to reduce poverty.
In this Review, the authors discuss challenges and opportunities for the use of social-media data in sustainability research and practice at the city level, and identify useful directions for future research.
Sustainability challenges, such as feeding people with fewer resources, involve challenges at the nexus of multiple issues, such as food, water and energy. This Review explores such nexus approaches, surveying their use towards sustainable development challenges, discussing examples, and proposing a systematic procedure and future directions.
Climate change and intensive agricultural management will interact to increase nitrogen (N) losses from agriculture. This Review analyses the processes underlying potential agricultural N responses to climate change, proposes a set of principles to help decrease N losses in the future and describes the economic factors that could affect their implementation.
A comprehensive review of studies about the impact of agricultural intensification on both human well-being and ecosystem services shows mixed evidence, which depends mostly on previous land use, the sort of intensification, and what specific outcomes are measured.
Ensuring human well-being within the limits of the natural world over time requires designing for sustainability. This Review analyses the extent to which cognitive biases can either limit or help such design. It also suggests possible changes to the decision settings of engineers as new ways to achieve sustainability.
Despite recent technological progress, providing safe, clean and sufficient water sustainably for all remains challenging. This Review assesses the potential applications of nanomaterials in advancing the sustainability of water treatment systems, and their associated barriers.
