Reviews & Analysis

The decades-long movement for sustainable seafood is centred on a ‘theory of change’ that emphasizes third-party initiatives for certification and consumer signalling. The evolution of that theory, and its potential futures, shows the challenges of management and co-ordination with multiple actors.

Climate change and intensive agricultural management will interact to increase nitrogen (N) losses from agriculture. This Review analyses the processes underlying potential agricultural N responses to climate change, proposes a set of principles to help decrease N losses in the future and describes the economic factors that could affect their implementation.

At the global scale, indigenous lands are critical for biodiversity conservation and cultural survival. Yet at local, sub-national and national scales both are often threatened.

A shift away from fossil fuel subsidies to carbon pricing could generate revenues to finance progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. This Perspective shows that in many low-income countries, as private sources of finance are limited, revenues from carbon taxes could be a particularly attractive policy option for financing the SDGs.

Most of the sustainability challenges and opportunities associated with urbanization are found in the global south. This Perspective shows the extent to which urban issues differ between the developed and developing worlds and identifies steps to re-focus the urban research system globally in view of allowing a more prominent role of urban scholarship from the global south.

Too much fertiliser in agriculture affects rivers and oceans at large scale. But it turns out that a surprising variety of non-food products is also to blame for impacts on water bodies worldwide.

Experts have long debated how to help poor, predominantly rural nations meet global development goals. One of the most anticipated, and debated, ventures, the Millennium Villages Project, has just published a retrospective self-evaluation mostly supporting the effectiveness of their multi-sectoral approach.

A comprehensive review of studies about the impact of agricultural intensification on both human well-being and ecosystem services shows mixed evidence, which depends mostly on previous land use, the sort of intensification, and what specific outcomes are measured.

Many cities rely on not just traditional delivery systems for potable water, but also standard economic models for valuing those systems. Both must be questioned to ensure future water security in drought-challenged urban regions.

Most published geoengineering scenarios are climate modelling studies, which biases the public perception of what is possible and desirable. Scenarios should be used more broadly to engage scientists, policymakers and society in a debate about which future climate and world we want.

The structure of criminal phenomena is often obscure for researchers. A study based on thousands of self-reported cases reveals the paths underpinning illegal adoptions in China, and some leads on how to tackle them.

Ensuring human well-being within the limits of the natural world over time requires designing for sustainability. This Review analyses the extent to which cognitive biases can either limit or help such design. It also suggests possible changes to the decision settings of engineers as new ways to achieve sustainability.

Theories of cultural evolution can help explain how norms that are externally enforced are internalized to become intrinsic motivations to behave sustainably. This knowledge is useful for developing interventions for behavioural change.

Large organizations struggle to implement new and promising sustainability practices widely, as documented extensively by social science research. Networks of informal relationships among people can contribute to the diffusion and learning of such innovations.

Choosing how much to take and how much to preserve from our environment is a challenging task, and every small decision counts. A behavioural experiment sheds new light on how time pressure negatively affects sustainability decisions.

Societal activities carry environmental costs, which can be mitigated to restore ecosystem function and services. A meta-analysis demonstrates strong negative effects of coal mining on stream biota and limited recovery after restoration.

Despite recent technological progress, providing safe, clean and sufficient water sustainably for all remains challenging. This Review assesses the potential applications of nanomaterials in advancing the sustainability of water treatment systems, and their associated barriers.

Current global models omit the complex, unpredictable behaviours that socio-environmental systems exhibit. Now researchers have proposed a city- and trade-based integrated model that includes these behaviours and explained its use for food and water security research.

Albatross populations of South Georgia have been declining over the past four decades. Bird mortality in fishing gear and increased environmental variability due to climate change prevent albatrosses from recovering and mean that conservation action is needed.

The collapse of the Maya is a topic of perpetual fascination. Now, a study modelling the development of their civilization finds that collapse was driven by land degradation, rather than precipitation change.