Volume 1 Issue 6, June 2018

Three decades of increasing temperature were expected to cause cod stocks to decline in the North Sea and Gulf of Maine, but they increased in the North Sea and declined in the Gulf of Maine. These trends are due to changes in fishing pressure rather than climate change.

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.

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.

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.

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.

An analysis of famines in England, France and Italy from 1300 to 1850 to determine the ecological and social determinants that cause famines, and their severity and timing. The authors find that Malthusian arguments regarding population density and food production were correct before the Industrial Revolution, with famines being caused by meteorological events; famines did not become ‘man-made’ events until after 1710.

A large-scale economic analysis of the economics of water supplies in the greater Los Angeles area, based on the ‘full-cycle’ costs of water sources such as imported water, groundwater, and reused and storm-water capture. The study showcases an updated model and framework for urban water studies that can be applied to other cities.

Aquaculture is surpassing wild-caught seafood, but we feed aquaculture with wild forage fish for key nutrients. This study finds removing such forage fish from diets of livestock and non-carnivorous aquaculture species and moderating its use in China will help sustain forage fish populations in the future.

China’s agricultural output is growing rapidly, but the environmental impacts are unclear. This study finds this impact has risen, but much more slowly than output due to improved farm management, though ongoing shifts in cropland location may challenge this development.

As agriculture is the primary driver of eutrophication resulting from the oversupply of nitrogen and phosphorus to water bodies, much attention has been paid to the environmental impacts of food consumption. Little is known about the impacts of consuming other goods. This study shows that in 2011 the final demand for non-food products accounted for over one-third of the global marine and freshwater eutrophication impacts—a 28% increase since 2000.