Volume 3 Issue 3, March 2020

The assessment of land degradation and restoration by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services shows that land degradation across the globe is a wide and severe issue and is showing no signs of slowing down. This trend must be halted and reversed.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used to quantify the environmental sustainability performance of products. This Perspective analyses LCA studies of commercialized biochemicals produced through microbial fermentation to highlight gaps in coverage of environmental impacts and life cycle stages.

Advances in remote sensing have helped to understand the human drivers of land-use change globally, but have neglected the role of illicit transactions. This Perspective presents a framework to identify illicit land transactions, and an approach to link them to land uses using remotely sensed data.

Research addressing sustainability issues is more effective if ‘co-produced’ by academics and non-academics, but definitions of co-production vary. This Perspective presents four knowledge co-production principles for sustainability research and guides on how to engage in co-productive practices.

Natural resource management involves complex relationships that are affected by data and knowledge limitations. Mental modelling can harness the wisdom of a crowd of stakeholders.

Agriculture transforms the Earth and risks crossing thresholds for a healthy planet. This study finds almost half of current food production crosses such boundaries, as for freshwater use, but that transformation towards more sustainable production and consumption could support 10.2 billion people.

Double cropping can increase production from a given area of land. This study finds that maize ethanol produced from a second crop with soybeans in west central Brazil can reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared with gasoline and also have economic and employment benefits.

Urbanization and economic development fuel demand for sand, used for concrete. This study finds that sediment loads are insufficient to replace the sand mined from the Mekong River delta, with mining rates high enough to make river banks unstable.

A novel method to assess the impacts of large-scale conservation interventions on household wealth while capturing local heterogeneity reveals small and variable impacts of a nationwide conservation programme in Tanzania.

An international arrangement of transferable fishing rights and biomass-based allocation can incentivize establishing Marine Protected Areas while promoting the economy.

Modern land management often assumes that past human activity shaped iconic landscapes. This study finds that climate, rather than indigenous activity, controlled fire severity in New England, with open landscapes developing after deforestation for European agriculture.

In India, a farming approach that minimizes purchasing agrochemicals is expanding. An assessment of this approach shows that it reduces soil degradation and provides moderate yields.