Publications

Awaz Mohamed, Fabrice DeClerck, Peter H. Verburg, David Obura, Jesse F. Abrams, Noelia Zafra-Calvo, Juan Rocha, Natalia Estrada-Carmona, Alexander Fremier, Sarah K. Jones, Ina C. Meier, Ben Stewart-Koster. 2024. Securing Nature’s Contributions to People requires at least 20%–25% (semi-)natural habitat in human-modified landscapes. One Earth. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2023.12.008

The cascading effects of biodiversity decline on human well-being present a pressing challenge for sustainable development. Conservation efforts often prioritize safeguarding specific species, habitats, or intact ecosystems but overlook biodiversity’s fundamental role in providing Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP) in human-modified landscapes. Here, we systematically review 154 peer-reviewed studies to estimate the minimu...

Daniela R. Farías, Rolando Ibarra, Rodrigo A. Estévez, Michael F. Tlusty, Oskar Nyberg, Max Troell, Ruben Avendaño-Herrera, Wendy Norden. 2024. Towards Sustainable Antibiotic Use in Aquaculture and Antimicrobial Resistance: Participatory Experts’ Overview and Recommendations. Antibiotics. https://doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics13090887

Notably, 56 worldwide experts gathered for the Antimicrobial Assessment on Global Aquaculture Production (AGAP) series of workshops to (1) evaluate the current state of knowledge on antimicrobial use and identify existing gaps; (2) formulate strategies to identify ecologically relevant impact indicators and establish thresholds for assessment; (3) identify pivotal socioeconomic factors and effective governance mechanisms essen...

Hannah Zoller, Nathan E. Lewis, Carlos Garcia Perez, Javier Betel Geijo Fernández, Wolfgang zu Castell. 2024. Measuring and understanding information storage and transfer in a simulated human gut microbiome. PLOS Computational Biology. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012359

Considering biological systems as information processing entities and analyzing their organizational structure via information-theoretic measures has become an established approach in life sciences. We transfer this framework to a field of broad general interest, the human gut microbiome. We use BacArena, a software combining agent-based modelling and flux-balance analysis, to simulate a simplified human intestinal microbiome ...

Nathan Clay, Kayla Yurco. 2024. Beyond the ‘gender gap’ in agriculture: Africa's Green Revolution and gendered rural transformation in Rwanda. Journal of Rural Studies. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2024.103444

The African Green Revolution (AGR) aims to modernize, intensify, and commercialize agriculture through increasing technology adoption by smallholder farmers. AGR interventions also promote gender equality, aiming to close the ‘gender gap’ in agriculture by enhancing women's access to purchased inputs, technology, land, and finance. With an empirical focus on Rwanda, this article examines the gendered implications of the AGR. W...

Tilde Krusberg, Lova Schildt, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Erik Zhivkoplias, Robert Blasiak. 2024. A review of marine genetic resource valuations. npj Ocean Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-024-00081-7

Marine biotechnology is a rapidly growing sector of the ocean economy, but efforts to assess its value, and that of the genetic resources that enable it, remain contentious. Through a comprehensive literature review, we identified 67 distinct valuations of marine genetic resources. We analysed these using the IPBES Values Assessment typology and found a predominance of behaviour-based valuations using economic value indicators...

María D. López-Rodríguez, A. Jiménez-Aceituno, Cristina Quintas-Soriano, Juan Miguel Requena-Mullor, Enrica Garau, Daniela Alba-Patiño, Irene Otamendi Urroz, Ana Paula D. Aguiar, Sofia Valeria Cortes Calderon, Antonio J. Castro. 2024. Applying the Three Horizons approach in local and regional scenarios to support policy coherence in SDG implementation: Insights from arid Spain. Global Environmental Change. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102922

The Three Horizons for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a novel participatory approach to co-create future sustainable scenarios for supporting the implementation of the United Nations 2030 Agenda. Whereas the approach has been applied to inform the design of global-scale sustainability scenarios based on regional perspectives, it has not been implemented to explore how local and regional scenarios can be connected ...

Minella Martins, David Collste, Francisco Gilney Silva Bezerra, Marcela Aparecida Campos Neves Miranda, André Rodrigues Gonçalves, Jocilene Dantas Barros, Manoel Ferreira Cardoso, Amanda Sousa Silvino, Taís Sonetti-González, Jean Pierre Henry Balbaud Ometto, Celso von Randow, Javier Tomasella, Ana Paula Dutra de Aguiar. 2024. Long-term sustainability of the water-agriculture-energy nexus in Brazil’s MATOPIBA region: A case study using system dynamics. Ambio. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-024-02058-9

The global demand for agricultural commodities has driven extensive land conversion to agriculture in Brazil, especially in the MATOPIBA region. This area encompasses the Rio Grande Basin, a major tributary of the São Francisco Basin that is known for expanding intensive irrigated agriculture and hydropower generation. However, recent data reveal declining precipitation and aquifer recharge, potentially exacerbating ongoing wa...

Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Louis Delannoy, Sofia Maniatakou, Carl Folke, Michele-Lee Moore, Pero Olsson. 2024. Navigating the polycrisis: assessing the adequacy of adaptive and transformative capacities for addressing Anthropocene traps. SocArXiv Papers. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/xtrmb

Social and environmental challenges are combining to form a polycrisis with potential to delay or reset many sustainability efforts. These risks raise questions about what capacities will be needed for advancing sustainability during a time of interlinked crises. Here, we evaluate the adequacy of adaptive and transformative capacities for navigating the polycrisis. Specifically, we perform a rapid assessment of their potential...

Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Luong Nguyen Thanh, Ege Pehlivanoglu, Franziska Klein, Didier Wernli, Dusan Jasovsky, Athena Aktipis, Robert R. Dunn, Yrjo Gröhn, Guillaume Lhermie, H. Morgan Scott, Eili Y. Klein. 2024. Association between national action and trends in antibiotic resistance: an analysis of 73 countries from 2000 to 2023. medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.09.25.24313966

The world’s governments have agreed both global and national actions to address the challenge of antimicrobial resistance. This raises the importance of understanding to what degree national action so far has been effective. Answering this question is challenged by variation in data availability and quality as well as disruptive events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigate the association between a survey of self-repor...

Max Bechthold, Wolfram Barfuss, André Butz, Jannes Breier, Sara M. Constantino, Jobst Heitzig, Luana Schwarz, Sanam N. Vardag, Jonathan F. Donges. 2024. Social norms and groups structure safe operating spaces in renewable resource use in a social-ecological multi-layer network model. EGUsphere. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2924

Social norms are a key socio-cultural driver of human behaviour and have been identified as a central process in potential social tipping dynamics. They play a central role in governance and thus represent a possible intervention point for collective action problems in the Anthropocene, such as natural resource management. A detailed modelling framework for social norm change is needed to capture the dynamics of human societie...