Publications

Wood, A., Gordon, L.J., Röös, E., Karlsson, J.O., Häyhä, T., Bignet, V., Rydenstam, T., Hård af Segerstad, L., Bruckner, M. 2019. Nordic food systems for improved health and sustainability: baseline assessment to inform transformation. Stockholm Resilience Centre; Stockholm.

Nordic countries can be a perfect leader in making the global food system healthier and more sustainable, but so far they are falling short on several dietary, health and environmental goals. Current diets in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland* are contributing both to public health problems and a range of environmental impacts. About half the population is overweight, meat consumption is at least 4.5 times in excess of EAT-...

Keys, P.W., Porkka, M., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Fetzer, I., et.al. 2019. Invisible water security: Moisture recycling and water resilience. Water Security Volume 8, December 2019, 100046

Water security is key to planetary resilience for human society to flourish in the face of global change. Atmospheric moisture recycling – the process of water evaporating from land, flowing through the atmosphere, and falling out again as precipitation over land – is the invisible mechanism by which water influences resilience, that is the capacity to persist, adapt, and transform. Through land-use change, mainly by agricultu...

Sellberg, M.M., Norström, A.V., Peterson, G.P., Gordon. L.J. 2020. Using local initiatives to envision sustainable and resilient food systems in the Stockholm city-region. Global Food Security 24.

Globally, food systems face multifaceted sustainability challenges and the need for food system transformation is increasingly acknowledged. However, there is still a lack of knowledge on the pathways for transformation and how they will play out in diverse regional social-ecological contexts. We explored transformation towards more sustainable and resilient food systems in a specific regional context – the Stockholm city-regi...

Folke, C., H. Österblom, J.-B. Jouffray, E. Lambin, M. Scheffer, B.I. Crona, M. Nyström, et.al. 2019. Transnational Corporations and the Challenge of Biosphere Stewardship. Nature Ecology & Evolution doi 10.1038/s41559-019-0978-z

Sustainability within planetary boundaries requires concerted action by individuals, governments, civil society and private actors. For the private sector, there is concern that the power exercised by transnational corporations generates, and is even central to, global environmental change. Here, we ask under which conditions transnational corporations could either hinder or promote a global shift towards sustainability. We sh...

Goffner, D., Sinare, H. & Gordon, L.J. 2019. The Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative as an opportunity to enhance resilience in Sahelian landscapes and livelihoods. Reg Environ Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-019-01481-z

Over the past 50 years, a large number of development initiatives have addressed the diverse social and ecological challenges in the Sahel, often focusing on a single entry point or action, resulting in only a limited degree of success. Within the last decade, the international development discourse has evolved to incorporate resilience thinking as a way to address more complex challenges. However, concrete examples as to how ...

Willett, W., Rockström, J., Loken, B., Springmann, M., et.al. 2019. Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. EAT-Lancet EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31788-4

Food systems have the potential to nurture human health and support environmental sustainability; however, they are currently threatening both. Providing a growing global population with healthy diets from sustainable food systems is an immediate challenge. Although global food production of calories has kept pace with population growth, more than 820 million people have insufficient food and many more consume low-quality diet...

Springmann, M., Clark, M., Mason-D’Croz, D., Wiebe, K., Bodirsky, B.L., Lassaletta, L., de Vries, W., Vermeulen, S.J., Herrero, M., Carlson, K.M. and Jonell, M., 2018. Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits. Nature, 562(7728), p.519.

The food system is a major driver of climate change, changes in land use, depletion of freshwater resources, and pollution of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems through excessive nitrogen and phosphorus inputs. Here we show that between 2010 and 2050, as a result of expected changes in population and income levels, the environmental effects of the food system could increase by 50–90% in the absence of technological changes and...

Wang-Erlandsson, L., I. Fetzer, P.W. Keys, R.J. van der Ent, H.H.G. Savenije, L.J. Gordon. 2018. Remote land use impacts on river flows through atmospheric teleconnections. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions doi:10.5194/hess-2017-494.

The effects of land-use change on river flows have usually been explained by changes within a river basin. However, land-atmosphere feedback such as moisture recycling can link local land-use change to modifications of remote precipitation, with further knock-on effects on distant river flows. Here, we look at river flow changes caused by both land-use change and water use within the basin, as well as modifications of imported...

Keys, P. W., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Gordon, L. J. 2018. Megacity precipitationsheds reveal tele-connected water security challenges. PLoS ONE 13(3): e0194311. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0194311

Urbanization is a global process that has taken billions of people from the rural countryside to concentrated urban centers, adding pressure to existing water resources. Many cities are specifically reliant on renewable freshwater regularly refilled by precipitation, rather than fossil groundwater or desalination. A precipitationshed can be considered the “watershed of the sky” and identifies the origin of precipitation fallin...

Malmborg K., Sinare H., Enfors Kautsky E., Ouedraogo I., Gordon L.J. 2018. Mapping regional livelihood benefits from local ecosystem services assessments in rural Sahel. PLoS ONE 13(2): e0192019. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0192019

Most current approaches to landscape scale ecosystem service assessments rely on detailed secondary data. This type of data is seldom available in regions with high levels of poverty and strong local dependence on provisioning ecosystem services for livelihoods. We develop a method to extrapolate results from a previously published village scale ecosystem services assessment to a higher administrative level, relevant for land ...