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The Belt and Road Initiative will greatly influence the future of global trade. However, it may also promote permanent environmental degradation. We call for rigorous strategic environmental and social assessments, raising the bar for environmental protection worldwide.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the food system impacts on a number of urban development issues such as poverty, unemployment and poor health. Informal traders meet the food needs of many poor urban households. However, supermarket chains are changing this, demanding particular policy and planning responses.
Droughts and water shortages have threatened urban centres before, but Cape Town captured the world’s attention to the spectre of a full-scale shutdown. The lessons to be learned go beyond precipitation modelling to institutional organization, technological infrastructure, and social behaviour, and every world city should prepare before it’s too late.
Professor Anu Ramaswami of the Advisory Committee on Environmental Research and Education discusses their newly published report about the next generation of sustainable urban systems science with Nature Sustainability.
Giving economic compensation in exchange for securing ecosystem services has gained traction in recent decades. However, debates about the efficacy and ethics of payments abound. To help ensure the effectiveness of these schemes, more care is needed in monitoring environmental outcomes and penalising non-compliance.
