Articles in 2020

The most-efficient solar cells use Pb-based halide perovskites; however, their toxicity poses environmental and health risks. Here, the authors report an adsorbent that allows for sustainable Pb management in these devices.

Interaction between international organizations and national governments over 238 World Heritage ecosystems shows patterns of productive and counterproductive dynamics, which yield lessons to improve environmental governance.

Although deserts have been the focus of large-scale solar power development, this study finds that ecosystem services are degraded during such development, with impacts not only on plants and animals, but indigenous peoples as well.

Governments need to act now to halt rising inequalities or they will fail to deliver on the promise of a better future for all.

Reports on the widespread presence of plastic particles in the environment have raised concerns about whether these particles could be taken up by plants and end up on our plates. An experimental study now reveals a mechanism through which nanoplastics can make their way into plant roots.

The presence of microplastics in wastewaters used for irrigation highlights the urgency of analysing the possible uptake of microplastics by crop plants. This study shows that submicrometre and micrometre plastic particles from treated wastewater enter the steles of crop plants via a crack entry at sites of lateral root emergence.

Solar-driven interfacial evaporation can be a sustainable process to obtain clean water but device efficiency and simplicity need improving. This study presents a super-wicking and super-light-absorbing aluminium surface with increased efficiency, a simple structure and strong performance.

International trade interacts with Sustainable Development Goal targets in profound ways. This study finds that while trade improves scores for environmental Sustainable Development Goals in developed countries, it decreases them in developing countries, and distant trade is a bigger contributor to scores than adjacent trade between countries.

The natural capital concept is making way into government policy processes and the private sector, but different understandings of the approach might lead to misuse or omissions. In order to address this issue, a comprehensive framework for natural capital analysis and decision making is presented.

Urban air quality remained remarkably worse than WHO recommended levels in cities during the first COVID-19 lockdown in China, despite substantial pollution reductions and the high costs of the measure.

Accurate estimates of emissions distribution in a vehicle fleet can help air pollution control. With diesel emissions data from chassis dynamometer tests and on-road remote sensing, this study shows that previous results about a skewed distribution towards the highest 10% emitters may not be correct.

A new database of over 2,700 policies on nitrogen around the world highlights the predominance of policies incentivizing its use or managing trade, and the need for integration to avoid shifting pollution from one sink to another.

Runoff from mountain water sources is critical to some lowland populations. In this Article, these populations are projected to increase from 0.2 billion people in the 1960s to 1.5 billion by mid-century.

This Review covers the sustainability of deep-seabed mining, suggesting a slower transition from exploration to exploitation may be beneficial.

Pushpam Kumar, Chief Environmental Economist at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), talks to Nature Sustainability about the need to focus on wealth to achieve sustainability.