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Sustainability is a function of environmental, economic and social integration. This Review synthesizes knowledge on the many ways biodiversity can support sustainable development.
A review of studies on exposure to elevated CO2 concentrations in air suggests that health damages, such as inflammation or reductions in cognitive abilities, can occur at levels as low as 1,000 ppm.
Ozone depletion has altered conditions at the Earth’s surface and interacts with climate change. This Review assesses the effects on humans and ecosystems, including implications for food and water security, and the mitigating and ongoing influence of the Montreal Protocol.
Population growth and economic development affect and are affected by infectious diseases and food production. This Review synthesizes understanding about the links between emerging infectious diseases and food production, finding strong associations worldwide.
Review of how a multilateral negotiation platform on biodiversity is championing diversity in both participants (by gender and ethnic groups) and forms of knowledge, such as traditional or indigenous.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and other high-level agreements acknowledge the linked nature of social and biophysical systems. This Review explains one research tradition, sociometabolic research, that explores these links. Sociometabolic research uses methods from systems science and allied areas to study the biophysical basis of economic activity. The authors use tangible examples from recent research to demonstrate strengths and weaknesses and then explore future directions.
The value of ecosystem services in cities around the world is highly uncertain. This Review focuses on ten of the most commonly cited urban ecosystem services and presents a synthesis of the scholarship on the factors that moderate the value and equitable distribution of such services.
The wastewater treatment industry contributes approximately 1.6% of greenhouse gas emissions. This Review analyses alternative wastewater treatment pathways for simultaneous CO2 capture and utilization and shows the multiple benefits of microbial electrochemical and phototrophic processes.
Resistance to antimicrobials and pesticides — collectively, biocides — undermines human health and food production. This Review assesses options for governing and promoting susceptibility to biocides to remain within the planet’s safe operating space.
The interaction between land degradation and the livelihoods of the poor is complex and conditioned by important economic, social and environmental factors. These factors are also in part responsible for the limited success of economic growth policies to reduce poverty.
In this Review, the authors discuss challenges and opportunities for the use of social-media data in sustainability research and practice at the city level, and identify useful directions for future research.
Sustainability challenges, such as feeding people with fewer resources, involve challenges at the nexus of multiple issues, such as food, water and energy. This Review explores such nexus approaches, surveying their use towards sustainable development challenges, discussing examples, and proposing a systematic procedure and future directions.
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.
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.
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.
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.