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After a year of intense activities, the University of Virginia–Nature Sustainability Expert Panel on behavioural science for design is ready to share its main findings and eager to bring more experts on board.
An international expert panel probes how engineers, architects and behavioural scientists can work together to learn about design behaviour for sustainability — and what all interested scholars and practitioners might learn from it.
In light of pressing societal and environmental problems, sustainability science must advance faster than before. In order to contribute to a cumulative body of knowledge, such research needs shared infrastructure, database development and changes in research culture.
A significant amount of research is needed to determine whether promising technologies in the lab could translate into implementable solutions to achieve sustainability.
Soil-based initiatives to mitigate climate change and restore soil fertility both rely on rebuilding soil organic carbon. Controversy about the role soils might play in climate change mitigation is, consequently, undermining actions to restore soils for improved agricultural and environmental outcomes.
A freight carbon offset presents an opportunity for transport operators and their customers to invest carbon offset capital within the freight transport sector itself, accelerating the transition to a more sustainable global transport network.
The global rush to develop the ‘blue economy’ risks harming both the marine environment and human wellbeing. Bold policies and actions are urgently needed. We identify five priorities to chart a course towards an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable blue economy.
Continuing debates on resilience reflect ongoing tensions and are vital to the advancement of understanding. Nature Sustainability welcomes them and aspires to promote constructive and forward-looking dialogue.
The terms sustainability, resilience and others group under the heading of ‘stability’. Their ubiquity speaks to a vital need to characterize changes in complex social and environmental systems. In a bewildering array of terms, practical measurements are essential to permit comparisons and so untangle underlying relationships.
Resilience scholarship continues to inspire opaque discourse and competing frameworks often inconsistent with the complexity inherent in social–ecological systems. We contend that competing conceptualizations of resilience are reconcilable, and that the core theory is useful for navigating sustainability challenges.
Dominant research modes are not enough to guide the societal transformations necessary to achieve the 2030 Agenda. Researchers, practitioners, decision makers, funders and civil society should work together to achieve universally accessible and mutually beneficial sustainability science.
Precision farming enabled by big data and gene-editing technologies are accelerating progress toward increasing nitrogen-use efficiency. However, farmer engagement, public–private partnerships and sound public policies are critical to harness the potential of such technologies to reduce hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico.
