Ambio最新文献

Climate change and CO₂ emissions are critical challenges for the environment and humanity. There is extensive literature on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, in particular CO₂ emissions. However, comprehensive analyses focusing on electric vehicles (EVs) and their impact are lacking. This study fills this gap by conducting a bibliometric analysis of 1143 peer-reviewed studies from 1989 to 2023. We aimed to identify influential contributions, understand the field's structure, and reveal research gaps. Analysis included citation networks, research impact, authorship patterns, content, and publication trends. We utilized bibliometric techniques to identify the most dominant countries, institutions, authors, journals, articles, and thematic areas related to EVs and emissions. Additionally, we overviewed publications associated with key search terms. Guided by five research dimensions (EVs, emissions, adoption, policies, and infrastructures), we framed specific research questions. This research provides valuable insights for environmentalists, policymakers, regulators, and academic researchers, facilitating access to crucial data on EVs and emissions.

Polar regions are critically implicated in our understanding of global climate change. This is particularly the case for the Arctic, where positive feedback loops and climate tipping points enhance complexity and urgency. Half of the Arctic and much of the world’s permafrost zone lie within Russian territory. Heightened geopolitical tensions, however, have severely damaged scientific collaboration between Russia and previously well established academic partners in western countries. Isolation is now causing increasingly large data gaps in arctic research that affect our ability to make accurate predictions of the impact of climate change on natural and societal systems at all scales from local to global. Here, we argue that options to resume both practical knowledge of collaborative working and flows of research data from Russia for global arctic science must continue to be asserted, despite an increasing tendency for the Arctic to become disconnected. Time is short, as preparations for the fifth International Polar Year begin to gather momentum. While sanctions remain in place, efforts to foster peer to peer connections and re-activate effective institutional cooperation are vital to address the grand challenges of global climate change.

There is an urgent demand for substantial reforms in the governance of coastal regions. Recent research advocates for a transformative shift in European coastal governance system towards a landscape governance approach. This perspective, informed by a narrative literature review on coastal and landscape governance, explores the potential value of coastal landscape governance, drawing on the Council of Europe Landscape Convention. Our results, presented in the form of a manifesto, underscore the need to move beyond political administrative boundaries and address all coastal landscapes as socio-ecological systems. It emphasises the necessity for the State to recognise them as a public and common good, establishing a specific governance arena with dedicated actors and institutions. The manifesto also advocates for landscape justice through knowledge co production, urging transformative change and landscape based regional design to envision alternative futures. Additionally, it calls for regionalising coastal landscape governance and invites scholars from other transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives to contribute to this research agenda.

Because climate change and the biodiversity crisis are driven by human actions, determining psychological mechanisms underpinning support for environmental action is an urgent priority. Here, we experimentally tested for mechanisms promoting conservation-related motivation and behavior toward a flagship species, wild Tamanend's bottlenose dolphins. Following evidence that empathy increases prosocial motivations and behavior, and that the ability to identify individual humans promotes empathy, we tested whether this relationship applied to the ability to identify individual dolphins. Participants identified dolphins from their dorsal fins at above chance levels, and better individuation correlated with higher empathy for dolphins and higher willingness to pledge environmental behaviors. Pairing a narrative with an image of an injured dolphin leads to higher donations relative to a narrative alone. Our novel finding that the ability to individually identify dolphins relates to empathy and conservation-related behavior suggests pathways for strengthening environmental attitudes and behavior.

Living with wildfires in an era of climate change requires adaptation and weaving together many forms of knowledge. Empirical evidence of knowledge co-production in wildfire management is lacking in Mediterranean European areas. We explored how local ecological knowledge can be leveraged to reduce wildfire risk through an adaptation pathways process in the Montseny massif and wider Tordera River watershed of Catalonia, Spain: an area stewarded through forestry and agriculture, tourism, nature conservation, and fire management. We combined different methods (e.g., a timeline and Three Horizons framework) throughout three workshops with agents of change to co-create adaptation pathways to reduce wildfire risk, integrating a historical perspective of the landscape while envisioning desirable futures. Our results showed that local ecological knowledge and other soft adaptation strategies contribute to innovative sustainable development initiatives that can also mitigate wildfire risk. The adaptation pathways approach holds much potential to inform local policies and support wildfire-based community initiatives in diverse contexts.

Over the last decades, bee biodiversity has dropped sharply due to land use change, including urbanization. To contrast this, recent research has pointed to cities as a hotspot for bees. Because of this ambiguity, a scoping review has been conducted to examine the urban characteristics that impact bees and how bees are impacted. A total of 276 articles were analyzed against landscape and local habitat characteristics. The key findings include first that natural areas are more valuable for bees since biodiversity levels are higher. Second, urban areas generally score better than agricultural and rural areas. Third, plant biodiversity positively influences bee biodiversity. Fourth, the urban environment strongly affects some bee traits and the proportion of native bees. For making cities bee friendly and bee inclusive, we recommend to maintain natural areas, connect natural areas to urban ecosystems, encourage floral abundance and diversity and increasing the size of urban green areas overall.

As wildlife habitats become increasingly fragmented, sharing landscapes with wildlife is becoming difficult and complex. Because stakeholders with diverging interests struggle to collaborate to manage human–wildlife interactions, new approaches are needed. Here we reflect on a novel participatory learning program we implemented with farmers in communal conservancies in the Zambezi region of Namibia. The 9 week program aimed to understand why human–wildlife conflict remained a challenge. We combined three theoretical framings in the program design—systems thinking, nonviolent communication, and learning based approaches. We summarize key outcomes of each session and reflect on the overall program. We found a synergistic effect of the three framings and concluded that our integrated program had been a useful collaborative learning tool to understand the human–wildlife governance system, identify interventions, empower communities, and build capacity for collaboration to improve human wellbeing and human–wildlife interactions. Drawing on our experience, we make suggestions for how the program could be adapted for similar or other environmental problems elsewhere.

Considering both ecological and social dimensions in the assessment of ecosystem services (ESs) can facilitate acceptable and inclusive management strategies, especially in peri-urban areas characterized by intricate human–ecosystem interactions. A limited body of research, however, has mapped the plural values of ESs and their different types of trade-offs in such areas. This research aimed to execute an interdisciplinary analysis of the biophysical and social values of ESs in peri-urban Shanghai, China, through a social–ecological approach that integrates spatial biophysical assessment with participatory mapping. Trade-off analysis in both ES types and ES valuations were then conducted, and multicriteria decision-making was applied for conservation. Our results reveal that trade-off intensities were lower within the social values compared to the biophysical values. Within both value dimensions, relatively stronger trade-offs were found between food production and other ESs. Areas with both high biophysical and social values were infrequently observed across ESs. Based on the characteristics of diverse values, our study identified priority conservation areas and provided management implications. We argue that adopting the integrated social–ecological perspective in sustainable environmental management contributes to the realization of harmonious coexistence between people and nature in peri-urban areas.