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The hazardous life cycle of synthetic materials is driving sustainable materials with biogenic building blocks to play a larger role. This Perspective identifies the main challenges and suggests the way forward by focusing on food packaging.
Moving from a glacial-hydrological focus to a social-ecological perspective of the wider catchment hydrology can improve the assessment of mountain water security. Such a shift can help in the development of context-specific and transformational adaptation strategies to changes in the mountain cryosphere.
Minerals are essential to human development, from toothpaste to building materials, but are often seen as an impediment to sustainable development. This narrative must change to ensure sustainable and equitable access to minerals for the globe.
Sustainable agrifood systems are critical to redefining the interactions of humanity and nature in the twenty-first century. This Perspective presents an agenda and examples for the comprehensive redesign of agrifood systems according to principles of sufficiency, regeneration, distribution, commons and care.
The simplicity of the urban–rural divide for research hides and blurs many complexities of human settlements and natural ecosystems. This perspective examines the peri-urban landscape and provisions of service that take place across this frontier.
Little is known about the potential of digital twins in the pursuit of sustainability. This study examines the likely benefits of digital twins in urban sustainability paradigms, their limitations when modelling socio-technical and socio-ecological systems and possible ways to attenuate them.
In the face of growing calls to restrict risk analysis to narrow and specific events, this Perspectives argues instead for fully integrated frameworks that bring risk analysis into all aspects of resilience studies.
Despite interventions, the widespread decline in plant biodiversity continues. Urban conservation gardening—that is, the cultivation of declining native plant species in public and private green spaces—can offer a viable approach to plant conservation, complementing traditional measures.
Scholars develop scenarios to identify the operational margins of system Earth, but focus less on how decisions are made that affect the system one way or another. Strategy games can help increase the representation of human agency in scenario development, allowing for deliberation among diverse worldviews.
