Volume 7 Issue 4, April 2024

Oxygen electrocatalysis is key for energy conversion and storage technologies such as fuel cells and water electrolysers. However, the measurement of the performance of electrocatalysts is not standardized. This Comment addresses emerging pitfalls in performance evaluation and discusses best practices for oxygen electrocatalysis.

Phoebe Koundouri, Professor of Environmental Economics and Sustainability at Athens University of Economics and Business, talks to Nature Sustainability about how the Global Climate Hub can help countries achieve sustainability against the backdrop of interconnected, complex challenges.

To realize sustainability transitions, there is a need for broad societal support. A study now shows that images can be influential in building that support, even in the case of policy decisions to invest in greener urban transportation, which more sceptical citizens would typically not endorse.

Global food systems, a major driver of biodiversity loss, are exposed to multiple stressors, including geopolitical shocks like wars. A study now shows the impacts of the Russia–Ukraine conflict on the global food market, and the consequences in terms of cropland expansion and biodiversity harm.

Most glass fibre-reinforced plastics (GFRPs) waste currently ends up in either landfills or incineration facilities, resulting in adverse environmental impacts and waste of resources. Now, a flash Joule heating technology can achieve rapid and effective upcycling of GFRPs waste into SiC, a material that has a wide range of applications.

Oil and gas installations, offshore windfarms and other artificial constructions may enhance marine ecosystems and have been proposed to help meet conservation targets. A study synthesizes existing literature to reveal global patterns in their ecological effectiveness.

Carceral facilities have experienced an increase in days with dangerous heat conditions over the past 40 years, particularly at state facilities in the southern and southwestern United States. Indoor temperature regulation is necessary to protect the health of vulnerable incarcerated populations.

International policy is concerned about palm oil-induced deforestation, whereas Indonesia’s government and industry representatives emphasize the role that palm oil plays in support of the livelihoods of millions of smallholder local farmers. This Perspective discusses how smallholders can still be supported without incurring further forest loss.

An increasingly warm climate can lead to more intense, frequent and longer periods of hazardous heat, increasing the risk of heat-related health concerns. This study assesses whether incarcerated people in the United States are potentially disproportionately exposed to such hazardous heat conditions.

Picturing positive changes resulting from greener transport policies can be more effective than trying to shift climate beliefs, often related to party affiliations. A study shows how AI pictures of future car-free cities enhanced Americans’ willingness to support more sustainable transport policies.

Understanding the forces behind the successful governance of common-pool resources is crucial to sustainable development. This study reveals the importance of establishing and enforcing ‘access rights’ in the face of intergroup conflicts over resources to facilitate the evolution of sustainable ‘use rights’.

Humans rely heavily on non-renewable groundwater, especially to support agricultural production. Like other depletable resources, groundwater extraction is expected to peak and subsequently decline during the twenty-first century, highlighting imminent transformations in the availability and use of water globally.

Extreme rainfall events, amplified by climate change, can stress public health, but efforts to assess health impacts have been fragmented so far. A study now analyses the relation between extreme rainfall and mortality from respiratory diseases across urban environments in East Asia.

The impacts of the war in Ukraine on global food systems have multiple sustainability implications that are yet to be examined. This study simulates the potential war-induced cropland expansion worldwide and presents a biodiversity impact assessment, showing the most affected countries.

Urea is an essential fertilizer; however, its production is carbon and energy intensive. This work shows a pulsed co-electrolysis strategy that turns carbon dioxide and nitrate to urea directly utilising a molecular electrocatalyst.

Sustainable end-of-life management strategies for fibre-reinforced plastics are urgently needed from a sustainability perspective. Here the authors develop a solvent-free flash upcycling method, enabling ultrafast and efficient upcycling of fibre-reinforced plastics to fulfil such a need.

Rechargeable zinc–air batteries are a sustainable energy storage system, but their performance is not yet competitive. Now a mesoporous single-atom catalyst steers the sluggish four-electron oxygen reduction reaction pathway to a faster two-electron process and enables highly reversible zinc–air batteries.

Using decades of high-resolution mapping, this study tracks the land area of the wildland–urban interface that is exposed to fire risk, finding increases in both area and risk in multiple locations globally.

The energy sector has led to the creation of marine artificial structures such as oil and gas installations and offshore wind farms. This global meta-analysis assesses whether such structures can act as artificial reefs and benefit the marine environment when left at sea following decommissioning.

Landfills are a major methane emitter, but the current bottom-up inventories used for emissions accounting are poorly constrained and show strong biases. Improved emissions estimates show that across the globe, methane emissions from individual landfills have been underestimated by up to 200%.