Volume 7 Issue 1, January 2024

Human changes to freshwater flows affect marine ecosystems, but such impacts are rarely considered in development plans involving dam building and water abstraction from rivers. Now research shows how approaches that integrate flow management and marine fisheries can improve both freshwater and coastal ecosystem sustainability.

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.

Gold mining has a substantial impact on the surrounding environment, especially in terms of mercury release and high energy consumption. Retorts have reduced the magnitude of mercury emissions in the Brazilian Tapajós River basin, but gold mining still releases 16,000 kg of CO₂ equivalent per kilogram of gold.

Facilities that store the waste and tailings of mining operations pose a salient threat to biodiversity. Despite international consensus to mitigate mining impacts on local ecosystems, globally, nearly 10% of facilities are located within protected areas and another 20% can be found within 5 km of their boundaries.

Water resource development can have important downstream impacts on ecological functioning and affect socio-economic outcomes associated with marine fisheries. This study modelled the catchment-to-coast effects of reductions in freshwater flowing to estuaries in Australia.

This study examines productivity and workforce dynamics in the world’s fisheries over six decades, finding that the natural limits of fish stocks combined with technological advances have led to diminishing returns per fisher.

Water consumption in line with natural water supply ensures sustainable and equitable access to freshwater resources worldwide. This study assesses whether renewable surface water is enough to meet people’s basic needs and, where it is not, estimates how much groundwater would be required.

As political institutions debate environmental policies, this paper reveals how some members of the European Parliament think about underlying principles of degrowth versus more traditional ‘green’ and economic growth platforms.

Theories of change have been a staple of sustainability research, but how to connect such overarching concepts to actionable items can be a struggle. This study uses coastal wetlands to demonstrate a potential framework for integrating indicators of conservation enabling conditions into theories of change.

While most conservation efforts rightfully focus on the percentage of protected land, this paper analyses how the size and complexity of protected area boundaries affects the remoteness of internal areas and the contiguity of protected natural ecosystems

The agricultural production of food comes with substantial greenhouse gas emissions and impacts on the environment. Dietary fats, a staple of human diet, might be produced chemosynthetically with a fraction of the detrimental effects on the environment.