Volume 4 Issue 11, November 2021

Dr Shailja Vaidya Gupta is Senior Adviser at the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. She tells Nature Sustainability about the challenges of climate negotiations from her country’s perspective, views are her own.

Sustainability and resilience are priorities in agriculture. A new analysis of four experiments with a combined 46 years of data shows that intercropping — growing multiple crops together — can increase yields, yield stability and soil fertility.

Wise management of ecosystem services merits considering their changes over time, but current practices are based on static maps. A new study highlights the importance of studying forest ecosystem service dynamics.

Changing social and biophysical dynamics, as well as data limitations, in the Kivu Rift in Eastern Africa make it difficult to plan for landslide risk. A study of historical remote sensing data identifies in detail the factors impacting the evolution of this risk.

Tree planting is often proposed as part of the solution to climate change. A new study demonstrates why it is critical to see this as a social science issue, not just an ecological one.

Biodiversity underpins the health and strength of ecosystems, but the complexity of those systems can be overwhelming for policymakers. This Perspective proposes a new framework for measuring biodiversity with an eye towards greater conservation.

Growing demand for food is confronting constraints to its sustainable production. This study finds that intercropping increases grain yields and their stability and that yield benefits increase over time.

Static maps are key tools for assessing ecosystem services. This study shows that hotspots of three boreal-forest services—wood production, bilberry production and topsoil carbon storage—can vary widely over just ten years, suggesting the value of dynamic tools to manage dynamic landscapes.

Proper management to mitigate and avoid algal blooms in drinking water is dependent on expertise. This study surveyed water managers across the United States to assess how knowledge is formed and disseminated, or how it is not.

A mapping study covering over 50 years finds that landslide risk is much higher in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, due to more recent deforestation and more people living in more susceptible areas, than in similar landscapes in neighbouring countries.

Despite concern among racially minoritized groups about environmental impacts within their communities, students of colour remain underrepresented in environmental science degree programmes in the United States and Europe. This study examines the experiences of students of colour to illuminate pathways to racial equity in the pursuit of sustainability.

Co-production includes diverse aims, terminologies and practices. This study explores such diversity by mapping differences in how 32 initiatives from 6 continents co-produce diverse outcomes for the sustainable development of ecosystems at local to global scales.

Large-scale tree planting programmes have been implemented or planned for areas around the world suffering from deforestation, but this study presents evidence that such efforts may not necessarily deliver the desired environmental and economic outcomes.

Carbon pricing can alter income distribution. With a focus on Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam, this study compares four types of carbon pricing schemes and finds substantial variation in distributional effects across policy designs and countries.