Volume 6 Issue 11, November 2023

Despite being one of the most managed resources on earth, water availability and access can be the subject of illegal trade. These markets and their governance need research as water becomes scarcer.

Closed-loop recycling of plastics is a key technology for a sustainable future. Researchers have now created biorenewable plastics that outperform fossil-based analogues and meet criteria for circularity.

Aromatic compounds have broad applications in our daily life, but their production currently relies heavily on fossil resources. Now, a strategy enables synthesis of benzenoid aromatics from bioderived feedstock, paving the way to the more sustainable production of aromatics.

Lead-halide perovskites could revolutionize the provision of low-cost solar energy but are limited by their neurotoxic lead content, which can readily dissolve in water. A supramolecular complex has now been developed to suppress lead release.

Primary human exposure to large wildfires more than doubled in the contiguous United States from 2000 to 2019, largely occurring in the western United States. This increase is attributable to an increase in the burned area, as well as to wildfires impacting more people and infrastructure per unit burned area, particularly in California.

A scalable fabrication method using a green solvent, γ-valerolactone, is developed to prepare high-quality formamidinium lead iodide perovskite films. Interactions between the solvent and precursor materials stabilize the perovskite ink, which has a long shelf life and wide processing window. Passivation of the films with tributylmethylammonium enables the realization of a high-efficiency perovskite solar module.

This Perspective argues that slums, particularly in the Global South, are often left out of circular economy research for a variety of reasons, but that such places already provide meaningful examples of circular practices in everyday life.

The idea that technology and green growth strategies can sufficiently decouple economic growth from associated environmental impacts has both supporters and opposers. This study presents the views of climate policy researchers from 73 countries on different growth models, including green growth, agrowth and degrowth.

Restoring forests is a policy priority globally, but often, little attention is paid to the type of forest being restored, which matters for biodiversity and livelihoods. Using a map of forest management types, this study assessed the extent of managed forests in recent tree-cover gains globally.

Failing to keep the increase of global mean temperature below 1.5 °C will have multiple negative implications. A study maps the annual changes in cooling demand, showing the most affected countries by warming, if the global mean temperature rises from 1.5 °C to 2.0 °C

Current models, based on incremental changes in a single stress, have limited ability to anticipate abrupt ecosystem changes due to climate and human activities. Experiments on four models simulating ecosystems with a range of anthropogenic interactions show how much earlier abrupt change can happen.

Exposure to wildfires is increasing across the continental United States. These risks are growing not only for populations living at the wildland–urban interface but also for critical infrastructure, such as roads and transmission lines.

Continued sea-level rise is driving the intrusion of saltwater into coastal wetlands and shallow groundwater reservoirs. High-resolution aerial images reveal that saltwater intrusion in the US Mid-Atlantic may be worse than previously thought, with costly impacts on regional agriculture.

Understanding the synergistic effects of aridity and grazing on dryland ecosystem attributes can be important for identifying ‘safe operating spaces’ for grazing under an increasingly arid climate. This study uses two-dimensional ecological threshold models to assess this in China’s drylands.

Understanding the drivers of forest losses and their economic implications is key to designing efficient climate policies. This study simulates market-driven land-use decisions to identify the factors contributing to forest losses, revealing such losses, their trends, temporal variation and social value.

Understanding the role of biodiversity in maintaining the provision of Nature’s Contributions to People is critical to sustainability. This study finds a substantial contribution of high-biodiversity areas to the regulation of air quality, climate and freshwater quantity, with important implications for conservation efforts.

The Rotterdam Convention addresses the international trade of hazardous chemicals, but its effectiveness is rarely evaluated. This study analyses international trade flows of highly hazardous chemicals covered by the Convention, revealing that large-scale illegal trade continues to have disastrous impacts.

As the availability of affordable freshwater in urban settings becomes ever more urgent around the world, this study looks at how an unregulated, informal market meets demands at the expense of groundwater resources.

While the phrase ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ is ordered that way to best minimize waste, many consumers seem to overlook reduction in favour of recycling after the fact. This study examines perceptions of waste management and why many people feel powerless to affect change.

A circular economy for plastics offers a promising solution to the pollution crisis. Here the authors take advantage of the unique chemistry of polydiketoenamine resins, showing how plastics can be biorenewable and recyclable by incorporating biosourced triacetic acid lactone.

Aromatic chemicals, having indispensable roles in human society, are currently produced from fossil resources. Here, the authors introduce a strategy to synthesize benzenoid aromatics from bio-based feedstock, showing the possibility of phasing out fossil-based feedstocks in aromatics production.

Radiative cooling textiles provide a sustainable means for personal thermal management. Here the nano-textile design realizes an unprecedented combination of human body cooling in both indoor and outdoor conditions without compromising wearability.

Lead toxicity of perovskite solar cells is hindering their commercialization, as lead is currently indispensable in making high-performance perovskite solar cells. Here the authors propose a new strategy to address this issue while simultaneously improving the stability and reproducibility of perovskite solar cells.

As lead halide perovskite solar cell technologies are progressing rapidly towards their commercialization, sustainability must be adopted as an essential principle. Here the authors show a green solvent formula that involves no toxic organic solutions but allows for scalable processing of perovskite for solar cells with high efficiency.

The authors deploy a hydrotropic solubilization strategy turning an otherwise poorly water-soluble acetate into a salt for a high-concentration aqueous electrolyte that features low cost and environmental sustainability and enables good performance of zinc batteries.

Illegal logging in the Brazilian Amazon exacerbates existing degradation and pressures, but has been difficult to measure. This paper identifies the risk of entry points for illegally logged forests into formal supply chains to quantify how widespread this issue may be.