Policy articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • News & Views |

    Controversy pervaded the June 2022 UN Ocean Conference, with partisan alliances forming around burgeoning environmental and social issues. Yet, out of the talks, emerged strong aspirations across UN states and other stakeholders to restore and protect the ocean.

    • Lisa A. Levin

  • Comment |

    Working spaces and cultures in the geosciences need to change in order to attract, safeguard and retain people with disabilities.

    • Anya Lawrence

  • Editorial |

    A high percentage of international collaborations in a country’s research output can be a sign of excellent networks, or of a reliance on know-how imports. Caution is needed in the latter case, but international collaborations make research more powerful.

  • Editorial |

    The world's inland waters are under siege. A system-level view of watersheds is needed to inform both our scientific understanding and management decisions for these precious resources.

  • Editorial |

    Asking people to trust scientists is not enough in times of doubt. Scientists must trust the people too: to make decisions for themselves, once they know the best available evidence.

  • Editorial |

    Investigations of sexual harassment are difficult and potentially destructive to all involved. It is imperative that they are carried out quickly, with high priority and acted upon decisively where misconduct is identified.

  • Editorial |

    The world has agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals, to be adopted this week. This is great progress towards acknowledging that the planet's finite resources need to be managed carefully in the face of humanity's unlimited aspirations.

  • News & Views |

    Leases of land concessions in Cambodia have accelerated in the last ten years. An analysis using high-resolution maps and official documents shows that deforestation rates in the land concessions are higher than in other areas.

    • Tom Rudel

  • Commentary |

    The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals emphasize the importance of evidence-based decision-making. This is a clarion call for Earth scientists to contribute directly to the health, prosperity and well-being of all people.

    • Jane Lubchenco
    • , Allison K. Barner
    •  & Jessica N. Reimer

  • Editorial |

    Guidance for mitigation action should come from the insights that global mean temperatures respond to cumulative carbon emissions and that there are risks beyond warming alone. Momentum for the negotiations requires a sense of opportunity.

  • Commentary |

    Geological and biological processes have eliminated all but the faintest traces of our earliest ancestors on Earth. To understand the origin of life, we must investigate other planets — but we can find what we seek only if we do not contaminate them with Earth life first.

    • Catharine A. Conley
    •  & John D. Rummel

  • Commentary |

    Planetary protection policies aim to guard Solar System bodies from biological contamination from spacecraft. Costly efforts to sterilize Mars spacecraft need to be re-evaluated, as they are unnecessarily inhibiting a more ambitious agenda to search for extant life on Mars.

    • Alberto G. Fairén
    •  & Dirk Schulze-Makuch

  • Commentary |

    Aquifers are the primary source of drinking water for up to two billion people. To avoid overexploitation, lengthy renewal periods of some aquifers must be taken into account.

    • Tom Gleeson
    • , Jonathan VanderSteen
    •  & Yangxiao Zhou

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