Research Briefing

One of the world’s largest longitudinal studies, conducted across India, reveals that global climate change in the twenty-first century has accelerated plant invasions. Climate change and invasive plants are disrupting ecosystems, including tiger habitats, and affecting millions of people. The study maps socioecological risk hotspots to guide restoration and safeguard biodiversity and livelihoods.

Dyes in textile waste streams pose a major barrier to textile-to-textile recycling. Our research has developed an upstream platform that effectively removes dyes from polyester and other textiles using sustainable, biologically derived solvents, and enables the recycling of both fibres and dyes.

Global inequalities leave billions without the services necessary for a decent living standard. Our analysis suggests that even moderate additions to societies’ material stocks in buildings, infrastructure and machinery could secure universal decent living standards, by 2030 at current construction rates.

Emissions data and machine learning are used to compile a global inventory of industrial chlorinated and brominated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon emissions from 11 sectors across 184 countries in 2018. Emission hotspots are concentrated in Oceania, East Asia and Latin America, with iron ore sintering identified as the dominant source, accounting for about 86% of total emissions.

Overcoming the trade-off between the aesthetic requirements and cooling efficiency of passive radiative cooling materials is challenging. Now, composites that use the photoluminescence of rare-earth-doped phosphors to achieve efficient sub-ambient cooling and vibrant colours are demonstrated.

Our research shows that the addition of nitrate quickly upcycles sewage sludge, which is rich in ammonium, organic matter and sulfur compounds, into anaerobic ammonium oxidation seeds — inocula that contain anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing bacteria — that can be used to initiate or enrich ammonium oxidation processes in wastewater treatment.

A systematic literature review is conducted to explore the promise and limitations of systems-based methods in addressing plastic pollution. The findings suggest that more literature focused on the whole life cycle of plastics is needed to improve understanding of the complex societal challenge and guide science-based policymaking.

Waste-to-nutrition pathways convert organic waste into food for people and livestock. Simulations of nine future scenarios in France reveal that the potential of five such pathways for reducing the environmental impacts of food and waste systems depends on process efficiencies, availability of low-carbon energy and the extent to which novel foods replace meat.

Solar interfacial desalination could enable the sustainable production of freshwater, but scale-up remains challenging. Now, analysis of the efficiency and costs of a large-scale interfacial desalination system operating outdoors over nearly four months suggests that scale-up is associated with high capital investment and a lower water production rate compared with laboratory-scale devices.

Two major scientific fields that are researching sustainability in agriculture, namely agroecology and sustainable intensification, have produced extensive research bases. However, they rarely acknowledge the limitations of their approach or engage with each other. This lack of dialogue might hamper potential progress in sustainable agriculture research.

Our study provides real-world evidence that disruptive climate protests can increase support for more moderate climate organizations, referred to as a positive radical flank effect. A widely publicized protest campaign by Just Stop Oil increased support for Friends of the Earth, a moderate climate organization that was not involved in the protests.

Technological advances alone will be insufficient to mitigate the global environmental footprint by 2050. This study introduces an integrative model that considers demographic trends, technological developments and behavioural changes and examines their potential contributions to future carbon, land and water footprints using Israel as a case study. The results are relevant for both Israel and the rest of the world.

We introduce a globally consistent, dynamic approach to ecological zoning, representing broad, homogeneous natural-vegetation formations via the Holdridge life zones. Our scheme directly addresses some of the shortcomings in the existing guidance provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Comparison of bird populations in areas with low and high levels of genetically modified (GM) crop adoption in the United States reveals heterogeneous effects of GM crops on different groups of birds. GM crop adoption has a slight positive effect on the abundance and diversity of insectivorous birds, probably due to a reduction in insecticide use, whereas herbivorous birds are weakly negatively affected.

We present a sea urchin aquaculture method called raking. Unlike traditional methods in which the entire gonad is the final product, thereby requiring sea urchin killing, eggs are the final product in raking. As killing of sea urchins is not necessary, several production cycles are possible with this method, enabling sustainable echinoculture.

Using PlanetScope and RapidEye nanosatellite imagery, we tracked 0.6 billion farmland trees across India over the past decade. We find that approximately 10% of the large farmland trees have disappeared over this period, primarily owing to changing cultivation practices.

Carceral facilities have experienced an increase in days with dangerous heat conditions over the past 40 years, particularly at state facilities in the southern and southwestern United States. Indoor temperature regulation is necessary to protect the health of vulnerable incarcerated populations.

The development of electrocatalysts with high activity, selectivity and stability for seawater electrolysis remains a challenge. Through engineering of the host layer, interlayer gallery and surface, CoFe-based layered double hydroxides are shown to achieve stable seawater electrolysis for more than 2,800 h at a high current density.

Although carboxylated cellulose nanofibres (C-CNFs) hold promise for numerous applications, current production methods are associated with environmental concerns. A type of deep eutectic solvent, comprising citric acid, choline chloride and water, has now been developed for the sustainable and scalable production of ultrafine and long C-CNFs.

Air quality improvement has benefitted large portions of forests in the USA over the past 20 years. However, although terrestrial ecosystems are now better protected, sensitive species still experience harmful impacts, which could lead to biodiversity loss through shifts in forest composition.