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Three decades of increasing temperature were expected to cause cod stocks to decline in the North Sea and Gulf of Maine, but they increased in the North Sea and declined in the Gulf of Maine. These trends are due to changes in fishing pressure rather than climate change.
Societal commitment to protect our seas has never been higher, but it will not succeed unless coordination across the various regulatory bodies involved is achieved.
The Belt and Road Initiative will greatly influence the future of global trade. However, it may also promote permanent environmental degradation. We call for rigorous strategic environmental and social assessments, raising the bar for environmental protection worldwide.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the food system impacts on a number of urban development issues such as poverty, unemployment and poor health. Informal traders meet the food needs of many poor urban households. However, supermarket chains are changing this, demanding particular policy and planning responses.
Droughts and water shortages have threatened urban centres before, but Cape Town captured the world’s attention to the spectre of a full-scale shutdown. The lessons to be learned go beyond precipitation modelling to institutional organization, technological infrastructure, and social behaviour, and every world city should prepare before it’s too late.