Articles in 2021

Contamination of the environment with plastics is one of the most widespread and long-lasting human influences on our planet. There is an urgent need to comprehensively evaluate the environmental plastics cycle and advance understanding of key transport and fate mechanisms to minimize human exposure to plastics pollution.

Existing methods to help decision-makers capture the interactions across Sustainable Development Goals do not incorporate the experience of the intended users. Using the case of Sweden, this study shows that most methods largely align with what decision-makers require for their application but show low performance on some critical features.

Ecosystems worldwide are increasingly threatened. Using an approach applicable to coral reefs globally, including data-poor regions, this study finds coral reef ecosystems in the Western Indian Ocean at risk of collapse.

Both lithium- and sodium-ion batteries could play an important role in combating climate change, but they often suffer structural instabilities in the cathodes, which degrade performance. Now a study on two cathode materials that function in either battery type sheds light on how their structure should be designed to suppress these instabilities.

Zinc batteries are more sustainable than the currently dominating lithium technologies, but their major technical problems have yet to be fully resolved. Now a new electrolyte formulation addresses most issues and delivers rechargeable zinc batteries with both performance breakthrough and cost advantage.

Social capital, embedded in people’s relationships, is important for practically all domains of life. Individuals need others to safeguard and enhance their living conditions. A study now shows that social capital helps in the recovery from a natural disaster.

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.

Aqueous Zn batteries offer safety, but the Zn anodes are vulnerable to dendrite failure and side reaction. Here the authors show a low-cost electrolyte that involves hydrate salt and organic solvent but proves inflammable. The Zn battery cell delivers excellent performance even at a low temperature of −30 °C.

Favoured cathodes for batteries should include abundant and redox-active elements, such as manganese. Here the authors report a Na_0.6Li_0.2Mn_0.8O₂ cathode design featuring a unique layer stacking sequence that provides topological protection to oxygen redox to overcome the performance fading.

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.

Oceanic uranium represents a vast fuel resource that could ensure the long-term sustainability of nuclear power. A new study seeks to harness that potential by developing a bioinspired adsorbent membrane capable of capturing uranium from seawater.

The vast amount of uranium in seawater is driving a shift from the use of mined ore to seawater extraction. Here the authors describe an adsorbent design based on polymers of intrinsic microporosity that adopts a bioinspired structure and allows efficient uranium capture.

Tropical forests are threatened worldwide. This study finds Indigenous Lands reduce deforestation and degradation throughout the tropics at rates comparable to protected areas and at higher rates in Africa.

Sustainable farming of fish requires their feed to be responsibly sourced. New research illustrates how we could convert industrial carbon emissions into a valuable feed resource.

Whether payments for ecosystem services (PES) are effective and how they change the motivations of land and resource users in the long-term is still controversial. A study of a program in Ecuador provides encouraging results regarding what happens if payments stop.

Doubling food productivity in smallholder farms — a major goal to achieve global food security, according to the United Nations — may come with additional nutrient needs. A new study reports that some regions will require almost 40% more phosphorus between 2015 and 2030 to meet this objective.

Methanotrophic bacteria can capture waste greenhouse gas emissions and feed fish, reducing the need for wild captures. An economic analysis shows great potential for this approach to replace aquaculture feed at competitive prices.

Phosphorous is limited in many tropical soils. This study finds that, despite such limitation, sub-Saharan Africa is on track to nearly doubling productivity on smallholder farms while some regions will require almost 40% more phosphorous applied between 2015 and 2030.

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

Historical and future trends in sustainability performance show that the world’s countries have substantially overshot their fair share of most planetary boundaries, without proportional social achievements.