Analyses in 2021

Most climate change mitigation actions do not fully incorporate the mutual relations between human and natural systems. This study presents an integrated model for understanding the role of human–natural systems interactions in climate change.

The COVID-19 pandemic substantially altered consumption patterns, especially for health supplies such as personal protective equipment, including masks and gloves. This study of 11 countries examines both the rate and types of litter being discarded as a result of changing policies and recommendations during the first 14 months of the pandemic.

In-person conferences have typically resulted in a large carbon footprint while limiting inclusivity of those who can attend. This analysis uses the pandemic to gauge like-for-like environmental and demographic outcomes for virtual conference attendance.

Despite the wide acceptance of the role of the material footprint indicator in sustainability, no reporting facility at present provides sufficient information on countries’ material footprints. This study presents a new research platform that regularly provides detailed global material footprint accounts.

Analysis of data from a two-wave survey of households in Nepal before and after the 2015 earthquakes shows that higher human capital helped them recover faster than did social capital and that the two forms of capital are partially substitutable.

Despite concerns about plastics in the environment, not enough attention is paid to the impacts of the various stages of the plastics value chain globally. This study finds that most environmental and socioeconomic impacts from plastics are due to their growing production in coal-based economies.

A long-term analysis of payments to reduce grazing on a threatened ecosystem in Ecuador shows that, despite intermittence of the programme and the resulting uncertainty, grazing behaviour among households diminished consistently

Access to green space has been a critical, and contentious, issue for neighbourhood inequality and health outcomes. This Analysis looks at how the COVID-19 pandemic interacts with availability of nature for urban residents.

Carbon pricing can alter income distribution. With a focus on Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam, this study compares four types of carbon pricing schemes and finds substantial variation in distributional effects across policy designs and countries.

Large-scale tree planting programmes have been implemented or planned for areas around the world suffering from deforestation, but this study presents evidence that such efforts may not necessarily deliver the desired environmental and economic outcomes.

Co-production includes diverse aims, terminologies and practices. This study explores such diversity by mapping differences in how 32 initiatives from 6 continents co-produce diverse outcomes for the sustainable development of ecosystems at local to global scales.

Climate change will alter the distribution of tuna, impacting the economies of Pacific Small Island Developing States. This study finds that greater greenhouse gas emissions will worsen these impacts.

Low-temperature CO₂ electrolysis is a promising process for producing renewable chemicals and fuels. This work provides a systematic techno-economic assessment of four major products, prioritizing technological development, and proposes guidelines to facilitate market adoption.

Capturing the carbon from energy crops—bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS)—requires water to grow the crops. This study finds that although unlimited irrigation could increase BECCS potential by 60–71% by 2100, doing so sustainably would increase it by only 5–6%.

Disaster risks are a critical area for research, but while the focus has been on man-made adaptation, this analysis of 529 studies compiles evidence for how ecosystems can mitigate hazard vulnerabilities.

Southeast Asia contains half the world’s tropical mountain forests. This study finds increasing mountain forest loss there, with the clearing frontier moving higher in the 2010s and causing unprecedented carbon loss.

Effective recycling of worn-out perovskite photovoltaic modules could improve their energy and environmental sustainability. The authors perform holistic life cycle assessments of selected solar cell architectures and provide guidelines for their future design.

The Chinese government’s interventions to curb emissions from iron and steel production have not been evaluated. This study develops hourly, facility-level emissions estimates to assess the effects of strengthened emissions standards on pollution from China’s iron and steel industry.

Innovations to tackle marine litter are urgently needed. A global analysis of solutions to prevent, monitor and clean marine litter identifies 177 solutions, mostly for monitoring, and shows that only a few are ready to use but none have been validated for efficiency and environmental potential.

An analysis of national economies’ unequal exposure to biocapacity constraints and purchasing power reveals how increasing demand of natural resources can lead to inescapable poverty traps.