Volume 5 Issue 10, October 2022

Flooding, already the largest hazard facing humankind, is becoming more frequent and affecting more people. Adapting to flooding must consider more than just water to encapsulate the effects of sediment movement, re-imagine flooding through a sociogeomorphic lens and expand approaches to knowing about floods.

Citizen science efforts are instrumental in monitoring our progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Dilek Fraisl, Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, and Omar Seidu, Director of Social and Demographic Statistics and the SDGs Coordinator at the Ghana Statistical Service, discuss how Ghana successfully integrated citizen science data into its official monitoring of marine plastic debris.

Margot Wallström, former European Commissioner for the Environment and former Foreign Secretary of Sweden, led an international expert panel at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute to study the intertwined risks of global environmental crises and conflict.

There are no silver bullet chemistries for batteries — but zinc technology, with its safety, cost and environmental advantages, has received renewed interest as a choice for sustainability. Now, direct imaging sheds light on the charge carrier, clearing a major barrier to understanding and upgrading this energy system.

Hydrological modelling makes it possible to derive measures of water availability that are representative of its importance for human sustenance. This approach, and focusing on water utilization processes rather than simplifying them into environmental factors, helps identify new quantitative evidence of interconnections between conflict, society and the environment.

Little is known about the potential of digital twins in the pursuit of sustainability. This study examines the likely benefits of digital twins in urban sustainability paradigms, their limitations when modelling socio-technical and socio-ecological systems and possible ways to attenuate them.

Determining the safe operating space for sustainable food production depends on the interactions of multiple processes within the Earth system. Expert knowledge provides critical insight into how these processes interact that improves Earth system modelling and our understanding of the limits of global food production.

While fears of ‘water wars’ have been publicized in recent years, this Article illustrates the complexities surrounding resource availability and socio-political dynamics that may induce, or prevent, conflicts over water in arid landscapes.

With a growing demand for minerals, protected areas (PAs) are under pressure to allow mining activities. This study examines the impacts of five policy scenarios under which combinations of PAs allow mining in the Brazilian Amazon, and shows the need for long-term planning to safeguard biodiversity.

Protected areas (PAs) are not completely halting biodiversity loss, according to growing evidence. This study shows the limited effectiveness of a large network of PAs despite favourable socio-economic context and high conservation efforts, suggesting that PA functional design matters beyond increasing resources.

Urban regions are growing rapidly worldwide, threatening surrounding habitats, including in drylands. This study finds that indirect impacts to surrounding drylands are more than ten times greater than direct impacts and that such impacted areas contain almost 60% of threatened species globally.

Mechanical soil decontamination is an important tool in remediating contaminated soils. Remediation efforts following the Fukushima Daiichi disaster increased soil erosion and downstream sediment loads that showed reduced ¹³⁷Cs concentrations, but rapid revegetation quickly restored decontaminated landscapes.

A rechargeable aqueous Zn–MnO₂ battery features a combination of favourable sustainability characteristics from safety to cost. The authors deploy advanced characterizations and theoretical calculations to provide fresh insight into the charge storage mechanism, which not only closes an ongoing debate but suggests ways forward.

Recovering from the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic while achieving environmental goals requires creative policy measures. This study analyses the sustainability co-benefits of reducing sugar consumption through redirecting existing sugar cropland to alternative uses via sugar taxation.