The dry sky: future scenarios for humanity's modification of the atmospheric water cycle
Cambridge Core | Global Sustainability
by Keys, Patrick W., Wang-Erlandsson, Lan, Moore, Michele-Lee, Pranindita, Agnes, Stenzel, Fabian, Varis, Olli, Warrier, Rekha, Wong, R. Bin, D'Odorico, Paolo, Folke, Carl
1w ago
Non-Technical Summary Human societies are changing where and how water flows through the atmosphere. However, these changes in the atmospheric water cycle are not being managed, nor is there any real sense of where these changes might be headed in the future. Thus, we develop a new economic theory of atmospheric water management, and explore this theory using creative story-based scenarios. These scenarios reveal surprising possibilities for the future of atmospheric water management, ranging from a stock market for transpiration to on-demand weather. We discuss these story-based futures in t ..read more
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The expansion and remaining suitable areas of global oil palm plantations
Cambridge Core | Global Sustainability
by Zhao, Qiang, Yu, Le, Li, Xiyu, Xu, Yidi, Du, Zhenrong, Kanniah, Kasturi, Li, Chengxiu, Cai, Wenhua, Lin, Hui, Peng, Dailiang, Zhang, Yongguang, Gong, Peng
2w ago
Non-technical summary Oil palm has been criticized for being an environmentally unfriendly oil crop. In recent decades, oil palm plantations have extended into conservation landscapes, causing severe environmental damage and harming biodiversity. Nevertheless, oil palm remains a highly productive oil crop from which most of the world's vegetable oil is produced. Therefore, measuring the environmental impact of oil palm plantations and identifying suitable land to support its sustainable development is crucial. Technical summary To meet the rising global palm oil demand sustainably, we tracke ..read more
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Transdisciplinarity, tempocoupling, and the role of culture in zoonosis research
Cambridge Core | Global Sustainability
by Matias, Denise Margaret S.
2w ago
Non-technical summary The general public became familiar with the term and definition of zoonosis during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the pandemic, several responses to mitigate zoonotic risk has been put forward. Often cited are stricter biodiversity conservation and wildlife protection but there are also suggestions to educate people who traditionally consume wildlife for food. This implicit condemnation of culture also manifested explicitly in the form of racism especially against Asians during the height of the pandemic. If the world is to avoid a pandemic, it also needs to work agai ..read more
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Recentering evolution for sustainability science
Cambridge Core | Global Sustainability
by Vázquez-Domínguez, Ella, Kassen, Rees, Schroer, Sibylle, De Meester, Luc, Johnson, Marc T. J.
2w ago
Non-technical summary Evolutionary biology considers how organisms and populations change over multiple generations, and so is naturally focused on issues of sustainability through time. Yet, sustainability science rarely incorporates evolutionary thinking and most scientists and policy makers do not account for how evolutionary processes contribute to sustainability. Understanding the interplay between evolutionary processes and nature's contribution to people is key to sustaining life on Earth. Technical summary Evolution, the change in gene frequencies within populations, is a process of ..read more
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Scoping article: research frontiers on the governance of the Sustainable Development Goals
Cambridge Core | Global Sustainability
by Hickmann, Thomas, Biermann, Frank, Sénit, Carole-Anne, Sun, Yixian, Bexell, Magdalena, Bolton, Mitzi, Bornemann, Basil, Censoro, Jecel, Charles, Aurelie, Coy, Dominique, Dahlmann, Frederik, Elder, Mark, Fritzsche, Felicitas, Gehre Galvão, Thiago, Grainger-Brown, Jarrod, Inoue, Cristina, Jönsson, Kristina, Koloffon Rosas, Montserrat, Krellenberg, Kerstin, Moallemi, Enayat, Lobos Alva, Ivonne, Malekpour, Shirin, Ningrum, Dianty, Paneva, Aneliya, Partzsch, Lena, Ramiro, Rodrigo, Raven, Rob, Szedlacsek, Eszter, Thompson, John, van Driel, Melanie, Viani Damasceno, Jéssica, Webb, Robert, Weiland, Sabine
2w ago
Non-Technical Summary This article takes stock of the 2030 Agenda and focuses on five governance areas. In a nutshell, we see a quite patchy and often primarily symbolic uptake of the global goals. Although some studies highlight individual success stories of actors and institutions to implement the goals, it remains unclear how such cases can be upscaled and develop a broader political impact to accelerate the global endeavor to achieve sustainable development. We hence raise concerns about the overall effectiveness of governance by goal-setting and raise the question of how we can make this ..read more
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Global polycrisis: the causal mechanisms of crisis entanglement
Cambridge Core | Global Sustainability
by Lawrence, Michael, Homer-Dixon, Thomas, Janzwood, Scott, Rockstöm, Johan, Renn, Ortwin, Donges, Jonathan F.
2w ago
Multiple global crises – including the pandemic, climate change, and Russia's war on Ukraine – have recently linked together in ways that are significant in scope, devastating in effect, but poorly understood. A growing number of scholars and policymakers characterize the situation as a ‘polycrisis’. Yet this neologism remains poorly defined. We provide the concept with a substantive definition, highlight its value-added in comparison to related concepts, and develop a theoretical framework to explain the causal mechanisms currently entangling many of the world's crises. In this framework, a ..read more
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Polycrisis in the Anthropocene: an invitation to contributions and debates
Cambridge Core | Global Sustainability
by Lawrence, Michael
2w ago
The popularity of the term polycrisis suggests a growing demand for new thinking about the world's intersecting crises, but loose and haphazard uses of the concept impede knowledge generation. The special issue, ‘Polycrisis in the Anthropocene’, aims to close the gap. This introductory comment first elaborates upon three key contributions of the lead article ‘Global Polycrisis: The Causal mechanisms of Crisis Entanglement’: a conceptualization of crisis as systemic disequilibrium; the distinction between the slow-moving stresses and the fast-moving trigger events that interact to generate a ..read more
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A review of existing model-based scenarios achieving SDGs: progress and challenges
Cambridge Core | Global Sustainability
by Orbons, K., van Vuuren, D.P., Ambrosio, G., Kulkarni, S., Weber, E., Zapata, V., Daioglou, V., Hof, A.F., Zimm, C.
1M ago
Non-Technical Summary In 2015, the United Nations articulated the ambition to move toward a prosperous, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable future for all by adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, little is known about the pathways that could lead to their concurrent achievement. We provide an overview of the current literature on quantitative pathways toward the SDGs, indicate the commonly used methods and indicators, and identify the most comprehensive pathways that have been published to date. Our results indicate that there is a need for more scenarios ..read more
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Towards integration? Considering social aspects with large-scale computational models for nature-based solutions
Cambridge Core | Global Sustainability
by Schulte, Ingrid, Yowargana, Ping, Nielsen, Jonas Ø., Kraxner, Florian, Fuss, Sabine
1M ago
Non-Technical Summary Information on social aspects of climate change intervention, such as behavioral choices and public acceptance, are often not included in global climate models. As a result, they have been critiqued for not adequately reflecting ‘real world’ conditions. At the same time, these models are important and influential policy tools. To improve these models, calls are being made for more interaction – or integration – between the social science and modelling research communities. Yet, it remains unclear how to achieve this. Responding to this gap, we explore what kind of integr ..read more
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Atmospheric water recycling an essential feature of critical natural asset stewardship
Cambridge Core | Global Sustainability
by Keys, Patrick W., Collins, Pamela M., Chaplin-Kramer, Rebecca, Wang-Erlandsson, Lan
2M ago
Non-technical summary In this paper, we explore how critically important ecosystems on the land provide evaporation to the atmosphere, which will later fall as precipitation elsewhere. Using a model-based analysis that tracks water flowing through the atmosphere, we find that more than two-thirds of the precipitation over critically important ecosystem areas is supplied by evaporation from other land. Likewise, more than 40% of the evaporation from critically important ecosystems falls as precipitation on other land. We conclude our work by discussing the policy implications for how these cri ..read more
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