Publications

Wassénius, E., Crona, B. 2022. Adapting risk assessments for a complex future. One Earth. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.12.004

Human activities have progressively eroded the biosphere basis for our societies and introduced various risks. To navigate these risks, or potential undesirable outcomes of the future, we need tools and an understanding of how to assess risk in a complex world. Risk assessments are a powerful tool to address sustainability challenges. However, two issues currently hamper their ability to deal with sustainability risks: the lim...

Downing, A., Kumar, M., Andersson, A., Causevic, A., Gustafsson, Ö., Joshi, N., Krishnamurthy, C., Scholtens, B., Crona, B.. 2022. Unlocking the unsustainable rice-wheat system of Indian Punjab: Assessing alternatives to crop-residue burning from a systems perspective. Ecological Economics. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107364

Crop residue burning in Indian Punjab emits particulate matter with detrimental impacts on health, climate and that threaten agricultural production. Though legal and technological barriers to residue burning exist – and alternatives considered more profitable to farmers – residue burning continues. We review black carbon (BC) emissions from residue burning in Punjab, analyse social-ecological processes driving residue burnin...

Österblom, H., Folke, C., Rocha, J. et al. Scientific mobilization of keystone actors for biosphere stewardship. Sci Rep 12, 3802 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-07023-8

The biosphere crisis requires changes to existing business practices. We ask how corporations can become sustainability leaders, when constrained by multiple barriers to collaboration for biosphere stewardship. We describe how scientists motivated, inspired and engaged with ten of the world’s largest seafood companies, in a collaborative process aimed to enable science-based and systemic transformations (2015–2021). CEOs face...

Economy and Finance for a Just Future on a Thriving Planet

Short, R.E., Gelcich, S., Little, D.C., Micheli, F., Allison, E.H., Basurto, X., Belton, B., Brugere, C., Bush, S.R., Cao, L., Crona, B., Cohen, P.J., Defeo, O., Edwards, P., Ferguson, C.E., Franz, N., Golden, C.D., Halpern, B.S., Hazen, L., Hicks, C., Johnson, D., Kaminski, A.M., Mangubhai, S., Naylor, R.L., Reantaso, M., Sumaila, U.R., Thilsted, S.H., Tigchelaar, M., Wabnitz, C.C.C. & Zhang, W. 2021. Harnessing the diversity of small-scale actors is key to the future of aquatic food systems. Nature Food 2(9), 733-741. Author Correction: Nature Food 2(10), 828.

Small-scale fisheries and aquaculture (SSFA) provide livelihoods for over 100 million people and sustenance for ~1 billion people, particularly in the Global South. Aquatic foods are distributed through diverse supply chains, with the potential to be highly adaptable to stresses and shocks, but face a growing range of threats and adaptive challenges. Contemporary governance assumes homogeneity in SSFA despite the diverse natur...

Crona, B., Eriksson, K., Lerpold, L., Malmstrom, M., Sanctuary, M. & Sandberg, J. 2021. Transforming toward sustainability through financial markets: Four challenges and how to turn them into opportunities Comment. One Earth 4(5), 599–601.

Naylor, R., Kishore, A., Sumaila, U., Issifu, I., Hunter, B., Belton, B., Bush, S., Cao, L., Gelcich, S., Gephart, J., Golden, C., Jonell, M., Koehn, J., Little, D., Thilsted, S., Tigchelaar, M., Crona, B.. 2021. Blue food demand across geographic and temporal scales. Nature Communications. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25516-4

Numerous studies have focused on the need to expand production of ‘blue foods’, defined as aquatic foods captured or cultivated in marine and freshwater systems, to meet rising population- and income-driven demand. Here we analyze the roles of economic, demographic, and geographic factors and preferences in shaping blue food demand, using secondary data from FAO and The World Bank, parameters from published models, and case st...

Lade, S.J., Fetzer, I., Cornell, S.E. & Crona, B. 2021. A prototype Earth system impact metric that accounts for cross-scale interactions. Environmental Research Letters 16(11), 115005.

Human activities are disrupting the Earth system's biophysical processes, which underlie human wellbeing. The planetary boundary framework sets 'safe' global limits on these pressures, but a sub-global assessment of these pressures, their interactions and subsequent systemic effects is needed to enable corporate and public entities to assess the systemic environmental impacts of their decisions. Here, we developed a prototype ...

Crona, B., Wassénius, E., Lillepold, K., Watson, R., Selig, E., Hicks, C., Österblom, H., Folke, C., Jouffray, J., Blasiak, R.. 2021. Sharing the seas: a review and analysis of ocean sector interactions. Environmental Research Letters. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac02ed

Ocean activities are rapidly expanding as Blue Economy discussions gain traction, creating new potential synergies and conflicts between sectors. To better manage ocean sectors and their development, we need to understand how they interact and the respective outcomes of these interactions. To provide a first comprehensive picture of the situation, we review 3187 articles to map and analyze interactions between economically im...

Blasiak, R., Dauriach, A., Jouffray, J., Folke, C., Österblom, H., Bebbington, J., Bengtsson, F., Causevic, A., Geerts, B., Grønbrekk, W., Henriksson, P., Käll, S., Leadbitter, D., McBain, D., Crespo, G., Packer, H., Sakaguchi, I., Schultz, L., Selig, E., Troell, M., Villalón, J., Wabnitz, C., Wassénius, E., Watson, R., Yagi, N., Crona, B.. 2021. Evolving Perspectives of Stewardship in the Seafood Industry. Frontiers in Marine Science. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.671837

Humanity has never benefited more from the ocean as a source of food, livelihoods, and well-being, yet on a global scale this has been accompanied by trajectories of degradation and persistent inequity. Awareness of this has spurred policymakers to develop an expanding network of ocean governance instruments, catalyzed civil society pressure on the public and private sector, and motivated engagement by the general public as co...