Publications

Spotswood, E., Benjamin, M., Stoneburner, L., Wheeler, M., Beller, E., Balk, D., McPhearson, T., Kuo, M., McDonald, R.. 2021. Nature inequity and higher COVID-19 case rates in less-green neighbourhoods in the United States. Nature Sustainability. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00781-9

Urban nature—such as greenness and parks—can alleviate distress and provide space for safe recreation during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, nature is often less available in low-income populations and communities of colour—the same communities hardest hit by COVID-19. In analyses of two datasets, we quantified inequity in greenness and park proximity across all urbanized areas in the United States and linked greenness and par...

Pelling, M., Chow, W., Chu, E., Dawson, R., Dodman, D., Fraser, A., Hayward, B., Khirfan, L., McPhearson, T., Prakash, A., Ziervogel, G.. 2021. A climate resilience research renewal agenda: learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for urban climate resilience. Climate and Development. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2021.1956411

Learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic opens an opportunity for enhanced research and action on inclusive urban resilience to climate change. Lessons and their implications are used to describe a climate resilience research renewal agenda. Three key lessons are identified. The first lesson is generic, that climate change risk coexists and interacts with other risks through overlapping social processes, conditions and dec...

Pihl, E., Alfredsson, E., Bengtsson, M., Bowen, K., Cástan Broto, V., Chou, K., et.al. 2021. Ten new insights in climate science 2020 – a horizon scan. Global Sustainability, 4, E5. doi:10.1017/sus.2021.2

We summarize some of the past year's most important findings within climate change-related research. New research has improved our understanding of Earth's sensitivity to carbon dioxide, finds that permafrost thaw could release more carbon emissions than expected and that the uptake of carbon in tropical ecosystems is weakening. Adverse impacts on human society include increasing water shortages and impacts on mental health. ...

Hentati-Sundberg, J., Berglund, P.A., Hejdström, A. and Olsson, O. 2021. COVID-19 lockdown reveals tourists as seabird guardians. Biological Conservation, p.108950. Vancouver. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2021.108950

The widespread lockdowns put in place to limit the spread of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) offers a rare opportunity in understanding how human presence influence ecosystems. Using data from long-term seabird monitoring, we reveal a previously concealed guarding effect by tourist groups on an iconic seabird colony in the Baltic Sea. The absence of tourists in 2020 lead to a sevenfold increase in presence of white-tai...

Folke, C., Polasky, S., Rockström, J., Galaz, V., Westley, F., Lamont, M., Scheffer, M., Osterblom, H., Carpenter, S.R., Chapin, F.S., III, Seto, K.C., Weber, E.U., Crona, B., I., Daily, G.C., Dasgupta, P., Gaffney, O., Gordon, L.J., Hoff, H., Levin, S.A., Lubchenco, J., Steffen, W. & Walker, B.H. 2021. Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere. Ambio 50(4, SI), 834–869.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwined and embedded in the biosphere, placing shocks and extreme events as part of t...

Engström, G., Gars, J., Jaakkola, N., Lindahl, T., Spiro, D. and van Benthem, A.A., 2020. What policies address both the coronavirus crisis and the climate crisis?. Environmental and Resource Economics, 76(4), pp.789-810.

The coronavirus pandemic has led many countries to initiate unprecedented economic recovery packages. Policymakers tackling the coronavirus crisis have also been encouraged to prioritize policies which help mitigate a second, looming crisis: climate change. We identify and analyze policies that combat both the coronavirus crisis and the climate crisis. We analyze both the long-run climate impacts from coronavirus-related econo...

Gordon, L. 2020. The Covid‑19 pandemic stress the need to build resilient production ecosystems. Agriculture and Human Values, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-020-10105-w

Mancilla García, M., J. Hileman, and Ö. Bodin (Eds.). (2019). Collaboration and conflict in complex water governance systems across a development gradient [Special Issue]. Ecology and Society, 24(3).

Nyström, J.-B. Jouffray, A. V. Norström, B. Crona, P. Søgaard-Jørgensen, S. R. Carpenter, Ö. Bodin, V. Galaz, C. Folke. 2019. Anatomy and resilience of the global production ecosystem. Nature, Volume 575, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1712-3

Much of the Earth’s biosphere has been appropriated for the production of harvestable biomass in the form of food, fuel and fibre. Here we show that the simplification and intensification of these systems and their growing connection to international markets has yielded a global production ecosystem that is homogenous, highly connected and characterized by weakened internal feedbacks. We argue that these features converge to y...

Jørgensen, P.S., Folke, C., Carroll, S.P. 2019. Evolution in the Anthropocene: Informing Governance and Policy. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 2019 50:1

The Anthropocene biosphere constitutes an unprecedented phase in the evolution of life on Earth with one species, humans, exerting extensive control. The increasing intensity of anthropogenic forces in the twenty-first century has widespread implications for attempts to govern both human-dominated ecosystems and the last remaining wild ecosystems. Here, we review how evolutionary biology can inform governance and policies in t...