News & Comment

Our expert panel on food value chains now shares recommendations on how to transform agri-food systems.

Coupling technological advances with sociocultural and policy changes can transform agri-food systems to address pressing climate, economic, environmental, health and social challenges. An international expert panel reports on options to induce contextualized combinations of innovations that can balance multiple goals.

The volume of work contributing substantial understanding and new evidence about sustainability challenges is growing. Making the most of it is imperative for interventions to be really effective.

Pandemic responses can engender healthier and more sustainable societies only if we attend to urban equality.

Sustainable interventions to manage wildfires are needed but require understanding the causes of such events.

Hand hygiene is critical for reducing transmission of communicable diseases, as we are so acutely aware during the COVID-19 pandemic. UNICEF has identified behaviour change and knowledge promotion as top strategies for increasing handwashing during this crisis, while acknowledging that millions of people lack the water necessary for handwashing.

Constructive criticism is paramount to the advance of scholarly debates but comes with challenges.

Michael Norton, from the European Academies Science Advisory Council, and Baldwyn Torto, from the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, talk with Nature Sustainability about recent efforts to address neonicotinoid insecticide risks in Africa.

Jon Hutton and Melanie Ryan, respectively the Director and the Head of Programme of the Luc Hoffmann Institute, tell Nature Sustainability about the making of the Biodiversity Revisited project.

Biodiversity research is replete with scientific studies depicting future trajectories of decline that have failed to mobilize transformative change. Imagination and creativity can foster new ways to address longstanding problems to create better futures for people and the planet.

Governments need to act now to halt rising inequalities or they will fail to deliver on the promise of a better future for all.

Pushpam Kumar, Chief Environmental Economist at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), talks to Nature Sustainability about the need to focus on wealth to achieve sustainability.

The current definition of desertification excludes hyper-arid zones given their lack of economic activity. However, the 101 million people living there, ongoing land degradation associated with the use of groundwater for intensive agriculture and climate-change-induced aridity call for a revision of this definition.

Embedding behavioural, environmental and health considerations, alongside economic needs, into transport policies can pave the way to a sustainable system.

Governments are deciding on measures to help economies recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, but, as in previous crises, a narrow focus on fighting the recession could have adverse effects on the environment and health. We suggest that health and sustainability should be at the heart of the economic response.

The effects of the COVID-19 outbreak are unfolding rapidly and governments around the world are seeking scientific advice to respond. Sustainability communities should be part of the process but need to up their efforts to engage with policy needs.

The world is not on track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6 on clean water and sanitation by 2030. We urge a rapid change of the economics, engineering and management frameworks that guided water policy and investments in the past in order to address the water challenges of our time.