News & Comment

A historic treaty to protect the oceans has finally been signed off by the United Nations, can we be hopeful now?

As interest in publishing with Nature Sustainability keeps growing, the editorial team reorganizes how it provides feedback to the community.

Anna Berti Suman is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC). She is the principal researcher of the Sensing for Justice (SensJus) project, which explores the applications of civic environmental monitoring for environmental justice.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a prominent methodology for evaluating potential environmental impacts of products throughout their entire lifespan. However, LCA studies often lack transparency and comparability, limiting their significance. Here, recommendations for best practices for LCA are provided, exemplified by its application to batteries.

Nature Sustainability is five. We reflect on what we have achieved so far and our ambitions going forward.

Sustainably addressing the water needs of populations in countries lacking adequate infrastructure is challenging. We discuss the potential of decentralized water and wastewater treatment using electrified processes across Latin American countries and reflect on what would help their implementation in the region.

The healthy watersheds concept links ecosystem condition with human benefits and helps decision-makers evaluate trade-offs. Implementation requires letting go of technocratic approaches, accounting for ecosystem services, embracing watersheds’ complexity and supporting participatory processes and subsidiarity.

Carbon capture, utilization and storage, a fundamental process to a sustainable future, relies on a suite of technologies among which electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide is essential. Here, we discuss the issues faced when reporting performance of this technology and recommend how to move forward at both materials and device levels.