Analyses

Recovering from the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic while achieving environmental goals requires creative policy measures. This study analyses the sustainability co-benefits of reducing sugar consumption through redirecting existing sugar cropland to alternative uses via sugar taxation.

Poor access to safe drinking water is a major global sustainability issue. Solar disinfection provides a feasible solution. Here the authors examine the potential of five most typical types of this technology, revealing their unique challenges and opportunities.

The Sustainable Development Goals were launched as a worldwide governance framework, but little is known about their actual political impacts. This study shows evidence that the Sustainable Development Goals have had largely a discursive influence and only limited transformative political impact.

The increasing demand for technological products across the world pushes further the consumption of most metals, resulting in growing sustainability concerns. This study examines a yearly cohort of 61 extracted metals over time and estimates their lifetimes and losses throughout their life cycles.

The sheer scale of global development aid projects and funding can be almost impenetrable for researchers and policymakers to derive broad trends, let alone specific topics. This machine learning analysis looks at 3.2 million separate aid activities over the past two decades to find clusters and categories for better targeting of development funds.

The environmental effectiveness of procurement incentives for electric vehicle (EV) sales depends on the behaviour of EV adopters. This study explores such a relationship and how procurement policies should be designed in order to achieve emissions reduction and be economically efficient.

Controlled use of fire for subsistence and smallholder livelihoods has undoubtedly shaped ecosystems but we have limited research on the practices and extent. This analysis of nearly 600 case study locations finds fire use is changing in ways that could pose risks to smallholder livelihoods as well as wildlife and biodiversity.

SDG interactions have been a focus of research for some time now, and this analysis finds a dynamic and nonlinear change in how the SDGs interact with each other as a nation progresses towards sustainability.

Using different high-resolution satellite datasets, this study analyses gross forest carbon loss associated with forest removal over the tropics during the twenty-first century focusing on regional fluxes and trends, as well as drivers of loss, both aspects rarely studied in previous work.

Greater photovoltaic deployment is critical to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, but the associated aluminium (Al) demand could pose a substantial global warming threat. Decarbonizing the electricity used for Al production and using less primary Al are the best ways to mitigate emissions.

Most climate change mitigation actions do not fully incorporate the mutual relations between human and natural systems. This study presents an integrated model for understanding the role of human–natural systems interactions in climate change.

The COVID-19 pandemic substantially altered consumption patterns, especially for health supplies such as personal protective equipment, including masks and gloves. This study of 11 countries examines both the rate and types of litter being discarded as a result of changing policies and recommendations during the first 14 months of the pandemic.

In-person conferences have typically resulted in a large carbon footprint while limiting inclusivity of those who can attend. This analysis uses the pandemic to gauge like-for-like environmental and demographic outcomes for virtual conference attendance.

Despite the wide acceptance of the role of the material footprint indicator in sustainability, no reporting facility at present provides sufficient information on countries’ material footprints. This study presents a new research platform that regularly provides detailed global material footprint accounts.

Analysis of data from a two-wave survey of households in Nepal before and after the 2015 earthquakes shows that higher human capital helped them recover faster than did social capital and that the two forms of capital are partially substitutable.

Despite concerns about plastics in the environment, not enough attention is paid to the impacts of the various stages of the plastics value chain globally. This study finds that most environmental and socioeconomic impacts from plastics are due to their growing production in coal-based economies.

A long-term analysis of payments to reduce grazing on a threatened ecosystem in Ecuador shows that, despite intermittence of the programme and the resulting uncertainty, grazing behaviour among households diminished consistently

Access to green space has been a critical, and contentious, issue for neighbourhood inequality and health outcomes. This Analysis looks at how the COVID-19 pandemic interacts with availability of nature for urban residents.

Carbon pricing can alter income distribution. With a focus on Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam, this study compares four types of carbon pricing schemes and finds substantial variation in distributional effects across policy designs and countries.

Large-scale tree planting programmes have been implemented or planned for areas around the world suffering from deforestation, but this study presents evidence that such efforts may not necessarily deliver the desired environmental and economic outcomes.