Volume 1 Issue 8, August 2018

The paired watershed approach is the most popular tool for quantifying the effects of forest watershed management on water sustainability. But this approach does not often address the critical factor of water stored in the landscape. Future work needs to quantify storage in paired watershed studies to inform sustainable water management.

At least 30 million people in three African countries and Yemen are experiencing severe food insecurity. To rapidly scale-up international aid, we should acknowledge the systemic risk implied in food insecurity by looking at, for example, potential international refugee movement.

A grand plan to devote half the planet to nature could create conflicts with farming. A global analysis locates the countries and ecoregions where scaling up habitat protection will be most difficult.

Systems thinking has been promoted as a way to improve human–environmental interactions, but analytical approaches to measure degrees of systems thinking remain elusive. If more complex thinking does improve sustainable decision-making, new methods to validate this prevalent hypothesis must be developed.

Renewable energies are on the rise worldwide, but they have to compete against established fossil energies. Lifting import tariffs on selected inputs for renewables can foster the transition to these energies.

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.

In response to continuing habitat and biodiversity loss, leading conservationists have proposed setting aside half the earth for nature. This study evaluates the trade-offs with food production and finds losses in croplands, pasture and calories that vary with the conservation strategy.

Cognitive mapping reveals how people think about complex systems and enables hypothesis tests on understanding interdependency. This study finds that education and experience are associated with more nuanced form of complex-systems thinking in sustainable agriculture, such as feedback loops and indirect effects.

Poaching undermines the effectiveness of marine protected areas, where enforcement capacity is limited. In this study, fishers adjacent to MPAs were surveyed, and it was found that about half had observed poaching, but that most do not react so as to avoid conflict, or because they feel that this is either not their responsibility or that poaching is a survival strategy.

Most nutrients in human excreta, if recovered, could offset substantial quantities of synthetic fertilizer use globally and advance food security goals by enhancing circular economies. This study analyses co-location of urban nutrients with nearby agricultural needs in 56 of the world’s largest cities and finds that in locations with high cropland density, nutrient-intensive crops and compact urban area, it would be possible and convenient to reuse human-derived nutrients in agriculture.

An econometric modelling analysis shows that eliminating tariffs in key inputs for renewable energy production can have a significant impact on reducing carbon emissions in Europe.

Intensifying agricultural production often imposes environmental costs. This study assesses progress towards the redesign of agricultural systems, finding that seven types of sustainable intensification now characterize an estimated 29% of farms on 9% of agricultural land worldwide.