Volume 1 Issue 12, December 2018

Researchers, stakeholders and funding organizations have embraced co-production of knowledge to solve sustainability problems. Research focusing on the practice of co-production can help us understand what works in what contexts and how to avoid potentially undesirable outcomes.

Urban biodiversity is an unplanned species assemblage. Although promoting native biodiversity should be the primary goal, the built environment often contains optimal habitat for non-natives. With planning and research, we could use cities as semi-natural assurance colonies for endangered species.

Toby Park leads the Energy and Sustainability work at the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) and talks with us about joint research agendas, co-production and communication of results.

Analyses of protein in our future food supply have focused on the need to reduce animal-based foods and increase plant-based foods. A new analysis describes a parallel possibility — producing and consuming less-considered options, including insect larva, algae and cultured meat.

Biofuels became controversial for compromising food production. Forest residue conversion to jet fuel is a second-generation biofuel that doesn’t compete with food. However, it has unexpected implications across the Sustainable Development Goals.

Issues around the use of natural resources are often framed in terms of the nexus concept. This Perspective discusses why the nexus concept matters in understanding the link between bio-physical and human dimensions, particularly with regard to the SDGs.

Organizations are social systems different from ecosystems and natural resources. Using social systems theory, and employing the concepts of emergence, resilience and scale, this Perspective presents management principles for pursuing sustainability across an array of organizational contexts.

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.

US coastlines that are exposed to hurricanes are subject to a myriad of regulations regarding building and rebuilding of structures, yet satellite imagery shows that the footprint of residential buildings increases after hurricane events for both new and renovated structures. Such an effect poses a challenge for vulnerable coastlines to build resilience in the face of growing hazards and houses.

Solar desalination is an attractive alternative to energy-intensive conventional seawater desalination. In this study, the authors present a completely passive, multi-stage and low-cost distiller using layers of membranes to achieve a distillate flow rate of almost 3 l m^–2 h^–1.

Global environmental change complicates the goal of securing adequate nutrition for a growing world population. This study assesses the per capita availability of food nutrients for various scenarios to the year 2050. Results suggest that economic growth will expand food and macronutrient access more than climate change will suppress it, but that micronutrient inadequacies will plague some regions.

Human diets strongly affect prospects for relative sustainability, affecting health, land, water, biodiversity and livelihoods. This study finds that select ‘future foods’, including insects, seaweed and cultured meat, provide major environmental benefits compared with current animal-source foods while safeguarding key micronutrients essential for human health.

'No net loss’ biodiversity policies seek to offset biodiversity losses caused by economic development. This study assesses the global extent of such biodiversity offsets, finding that they occupy an area much larger than recognized and that most are small and implemented due to regulatory requirements.

Aviation biofuels for climate change mitigation may be detrimental to other sustainability goals, according to a life-cycle assessment. Negative effects can be mitigated with appropriate technology and supply-chain management.

Reducing direct economic losses from disasters is part of mitigating disaster impacts. This study presents an update to the leading dataset on normalized US hurricane losses in the continental United States from 1900 to 2017.