Publication archive

Untapped capacity for resilience in environmental law

Garmestani, A.S., J.B. Ruhl, B.C. Chaffin, R.K. Craig, H.F.M.W. van Rijswick, D.G. Angeler, C. Folke L.H. Gunderson, D. Twidwell, and C.R. Allen. 2019. Untapped Capacity for Resilience in Environmental Law. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA

2020 - Journal / article

Over the past several decades, environmental governance has made substantial progress in addressing environmental change, but emerging environmental problems require new innovations in law, policy, and governance. While expansive legal reform is unlikely to occur soon, there is untapped potential in existing laws to address environmental change, both by leveraging adaptive and transformative capacities within the law itself to...

Editorial for Special Issue: “Livelihood and Landscape Change in Africa: Future Trajectories for Improved Well-Being under a Changing Climate”

Shackleton, S., Masterson, V., Hebinck, P., Speranza, C., I., Spear, D., Tengö, M. 2019. Editorial for Special Issue: “Livelihood and Landscape Change in Africa: Future Trajectories for Improved Well-Being under a Changing Climate”. Land 2019, 8(8), 114; https://doi.org/10.3390/land8080114

2019 - Journal / article

Rural people’s livelihoods are intimately linked to the landscapes in which they live and are particularly vulnerable to changes in these landscapes (Suich et al. 2015 [ 1 ]). At the same time changes in livelihood activities may have negative feedbacks on landscapes and the ecosystem services they provide. In much of Africa, rural landscapes are subject to increasing pressures from environmental and socio-economic change. T...

Upscaling urban data science for global climate solutions

Creutzig, F., Lohrey, S., Bai, X, Baklarov, A., Dawson, R., et.al. 2019. Upscaling urban data science for global climate solutions. Global Sustainability, Volume 2, 2019, e2. DOI: 10.1017/sus.2018.16

2019 - Journal / article

Manhattan, Berlin and New Delhi all need to take action to adapt to climate change and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While case studies on these cities provide valuable insights, comparability and scalability remain sidelined. It is therefore timely to review the state-of-the-art in data infrastructures, including earth observations, social media data, and how they could be better integrated to advance climate change sci...

CO2peration – Structuring a 3D interactive digital game to improve climate literacy in the 12-13-year-old age group

Harker-Schuch, I.E.P., Mills, F.M., Lade, S.J., Colvin, R.M. 2019. CO2peration – Structuring a 3D interactive digital game to improve climate literacy in the 12-13-year-old age group. Computers & EducationVolume 144, January 2020, 103705

2019 - Journal / article

Preparing students for their future and qualifying them to enter public life is the essential role of the public-school system. As such, an understanding of climate science ought to be an essential – and significant – component of that preparation. This research proposes a novel pathway to teach climate science via a 3D interactive digital game and examines the potential of 12–13-year olds as a prepatent group for climate scie...

Eight grand challenges in socio-environmental systems modeling

Elsawah, S., Filatova, T., Jakeman, A. J., Kettner, A. J., Zellner, M. L., Athanasiadis, I. N., Hamilton, S. H., Axtell, R. L., Brown, D. G., Gilligan, J. M., Janssen, M. A., Robinson, D. T., Rozenberg, J., Ullah, I. I. T., & Lade, S. J. 2020. Eight grand challenges in socio-environmental systems modeling. Socio-Environmental Systems Modelling, 2, 16226. https://doi.org/10.18174/sesmo.2020a16226

2019 - Journal / article

Modeling is essential to characterize and explore complex societal and environmental issues in systematic and collaborative ways. Socio-environmental systems (SES) modeling integrates knowledge and perspectives into conceptual and computational tools that explicitly recognize how human decisions affect the environment. Depending on the modeling purpose, many SES modelers also realize that involvement of stakeholders and expert...

Challenges and opportunities towards improved application of the planetary boundary for land-system change in life cycle assessment of products

Bjørn, A., Sim, S., King, H., Keys, P., Erlandsson, L-W., Cornell, S.E. et.al. 2019. Challenges and opportunities towards improved application of the planetary boundary for land-system change in life cycle assessment of products. Science of The Total Environment Volume 696, 15 December 2019, 133964

2019 - Journal / article

Life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used to translate the planetary boundaries (PBs) concept to the scale of decisions related to products. Existing PB-LCA methods convert quantified resource use and emissions to changes in the values of PB control variables. However, the control variable for the Land-system change PB, “area of forested land remaining”, is not suitable for use in LCA, since it is expressed at the beginning of a...

Human dependence on natural resources in rapidly urbanising South African regions

Balbi, S., Selomane, O., Sitas, N., Blanchard, R., et.al. 2019. Human dependence on natural resources in rapidly urbanising South African regions. Environmental Research Letters, Volume 14, Number 4

2019 - Journal / article

Enhancing the governance of social-ecological systems for more equitable and sustainable development is hindered by inadequate knowledge about how different social groups and communities rely on natural resources. We used openly accessible national survey data to develop a metric of overall dependence on natural resources. These data contain information about households' sources of water, energy, building materials and food. ...

Harvesting synergy from Sustainable Development Goal interactions

Pedercini, M., Arquitt, S., Collste, D., Herren, H. 2019. Harvesting synergy from Sustainable Development Goal interactions. SocArXiv Papers, DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/jt6r7

2019 - Journal / article

In combination, policies for sustainable development can work together and synergize. In so doing, the resulting impact of a strategic policy mix can be greater than the sum of the individual policies of its individual parts. That synergetic potential can be utilized to attain strategic objectives. This is the case when it comes to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations 2030 Agenda. However, i...

Degrees of change toward polycentric transboundary water governance: exploring the Columbia River and the Lesotho Highlands Water Project

Baltutis, W. J., and M.-L. Moore. 2019. Degrees of change toward polycentric transboundary water governance: exploring the Columbia River and the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. Ecology and Society 24(2):6.https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10852-240206

2019 - Journal / article

 Complex challenges emerging in transboundary river basins reveal a need to include a range of interests and actors in governance processes. Polycentric governance is one framework that can address this need and inform adaptive and resilient governance processes in transboundary basins as linked social and ecological systems. Here, we explore whether and how nonstate actors might be contributing to a shift in governance toward...

Changes in secondary vegetation dynamics in a context of decreasing deforestation rates in Pará, Brazilian Amazon

Carvalho, R., Adami, M., Amaral, S., Bezerra, F.G., de Aguiar, A.P.D. 2019. Changes in secondary vegetation dynamics in a context of decreasing deforestation rates in Pará, Brazilian Amazon. Applied Geography Volume 106, May 2019, Pages 40-49

2019 - Journal / article

Tropical secondary vegetation is of particular interest as carbon sinks , potential lands for agriculture and livestock expansion, biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services . Until mid-2000s estimates of secondary vegetation in the Brazilian Amazon indicated a progressive increase of this cover, however after 2010, only 1197 km 2 of additional secondary vegetation were generated, while 42,040 km 2 were conver...