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Adopting technological solutions for water management without considering the complexity underlying human–water interactions can result in unintended consequences. Now a systems meta-model offers a tool to reveal critical human–water links and guide coordinated solutions for sustainable water management.
Heatwaves are more frequent and lead to considerable suffering, especially among the poorest and most disadvantaged people. This Perspective discusses the concept of systemic cooling poverty with the aim of informing policy and practice to support vulnerable groups.
Rangelands provide critical ecosystem and societal services and are central to livestock husbandry across the United States. How these considerations are balanced, and possibly expanded on, will shape the future of rangeland ecosystems and communities moving into the future.
World Heritage Sites are under threat of severe impacts due to climate change. This Perspective discusses three facets of management—integrating pluralistic values, adopting holistic methods and ensuring Indigenous leadership—that can assist the conservation of sites.
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 concept of resilience, once meaning the ability to ‘bounce back’ to the status quo, now refers to the capacity to live and develop with change. A mismatch between the latest science of resilience and the talk of resilience recovery after COVID-19 requires resilience thinking to be aligned with sustainable development.
Human and natural systems are inextricably intertwined, co-evolving systems. The study presents a new conservation framework incorporating the different roles people can play in ecosystem health, through land stewardship.
Biophysical boundaries are not inherently just. A collaboration between social and natural scientists, the Earth Commission, defines and operationalizes Earth system justice to ensure that biophysical boundaries reduce harm, increase well-being, and reflect substantive and procedural justice.
A varied repertoire of responses helps manage fluctuations, as in markets. This Perspective argues that society needs to strengthen the diversity of options for responding to disruptions, exploring how this response diversity is expressed, how it can be built and lost, and what we can do to promote it.
Owing to the underlying chemical nature of many environmental injustices, green chemistry can play a role in advancing environmental justice towards a more equitable future.
Philosophers in the Western tradition of virtue ethics have long considered practical wisdom a central virtue. This Perspective suggests that virtue ethics and practical wisdom can enrich the work of sustainability researchers, helping them to navigate the challenges of co-producing knowledge and effecting transformative change.
