Ambio最新文献

Water knowledge, understanding the current and future availability and needs of water, has been critical in negotiating international water disputes. Drawing from expert interviews, this article examines how Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools influence knowledge production and exchange in water diplomacy. The findings suggest that technical strides from AI technologies can enhance data and information objectivity and social learning, potentially benefiting water negotiations and consensus building. However, without addressing political and human challenges, AI tools can exacerbate the risk of eroding trust and spreading dis- and mis-information about politically sensitive water issues. The malicious use of AI poses a serious risk, as negotiators may face increased pressure from public opinion, potentially undermining cooperative progress and escalating tensions over water.

Research on the human health risks of climate change is expanding, yet the influence of polar region shifts on these risks remains underexplored. This paper presents a framework to assess global and regional health risks stemming from polar physical changes. The polar regions are experiencing rapid environmental transformations, including melting ice, ocean warming, ocean acidification, permafrost thaw, intensifying wildfires, and alterations to jet streams, ocean currents. These changes can amplify global risks, affecting human health even in distant regions. The paper identifies potential cascading impacts on health and well-being via drivers such as extreme weather, heat stress, air, water quality, food supply, safety, vector ecology, and sea-level rise. A scoping review was conducted by an international team of public health and polar experts to support thematic categorization of regional and global health risks. The paper advocates integrating these amplified risks into health impact assessments through interdisciplinary, international collaboration to inform future policy responses.

Human-wildlife conflict is a pressing worldwide issue with consequences that are experienced differently across groups of people. Societal expectations and gender norms ensure that the consequences of these conflicts have nuanced, gender-dependent implications. We conducted a systematic literature review on human-wildlife conflict to synthesize gendered costs. We examined six cost types: economic, physical, psychological, social, conservation management participation, and wildlife crime, and found that these costs varied significantly by gender. We also found that costs have gendered consequences for how people perceive the wildlife involved in these conflicts. We identify a range of opportunities and entry points for managers, researchers, and policymakers interested in reducing costs associated with human-wildlife conflict by more directly accounting for gender.

Deserts are often misperceived as desolate, non-productive landscapes. This perception contributes to the misuse of terms like 'semiarid' and 'desertification', creating ambiguity in how deserts are defined and geographically delineated. Such conceptual confusion can hinder effective policy by obscuring what constitutes a desert and where they occur. We identify key incongruencies between climatic and ecological approaches to classifying deserts, revealing nearly 12 million km² of distinct, non-overlapping desert regions globally. A new, more comprehensive desert classification is needed to better support policy goals in desert regions. This refined understanding is especially urgent as human pressures accelerate land degradation across drylands-a process the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification refers to as 'desertification'. However, the term is misperceived as the expansion of deserts while ignoring land degradation in actual desert regions. We challenge these misconceptions and advocate for a more nuanced understanding of deserts to strengthen scientific and policy frameworks.

Ecosystem service assessments (ESA) are widely used to support marine management, yet their application varies across regions due to differences in governance frameworks, data availability, and methodological approaches. This study systematically reviews ESA methods and tools applied in offshore areas of the Baltic Sea, South Atlantic Ocean, and Western Mediterranean Sea, evaluating their effectiveness in supporting sustainable marine management with a specific focus on offshore wind farms, marine protected areas, and fishing activities. The findings reveal geographical variations in ESA implementation, highlighting strengths and limitations in their ability to inform policy and decision-making. While methodological diversity enhances ESA's capacity to capture complex socio-ecological interactions, inconsistencies in application reduce its effectiveness. Addressing these gaps requires refining methodological approaches, strengthening interdisciplinary collaboration, and improving the link between ESA and marine governance. This research provides insights into the current state of ESA applications and offers recommendations for enhancing their role in ecosystem-based marine planning and policy integration.

This paper examines a paradigm shift that aims to include nonhuman entities (NHEs) in the decision-making processes in water governance. Drawing on multidisciplinary insights, it analyzes how scholars reconceptualize and actors experiment water as a common good, both reflecting with different views on the transformation of the relationship between human and its environment and multispecies. This paper highlights the dominance of anthropocentric water management, identifies the global Rights of Nature movement as a legal avenue for recognizing aquatic NHEs, analyzes the challenges of representing and integrating their needs into governance frameworks, and proposes pathways toward more inclusive socio-ecological policy. By combining theoretical perspectives with practical considerations in Europe, it outlines a research agenda to address the epistemological, ethical, and operational dimensions of extending water governance models beyond human-centered approaches.

Ocean sustainability matters to everyone because planetary health depends on the ocean and a healthy ocean requires a sustainability transformation across society, land and sea. The ocean is a critical arena for addressing the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Public engagement with ocean sustainability shows considerable potential to drive forward global sustainability action, as seen in contemporary concerns regarding marine plastic pollution rallying political leaders to develop a global plastics treaty. Despite this success, communities inland can still be much better connected to ocean sustainability and should be engaged to hold decision-makers to account for environmental and social progress alongside political interest in the growing ocean economy. Accessible and emotive messaging is required for public and political audiences, but delivery needs are complex, so we must ensure advances in public engagement are in tandem with translation into appropriate action. This Perspective recommends that we: (1) use a Rivers to Seas paradigm to better connect public support for ocean sustainability with land-based populations; (2) use accessible and emotive public messaging connected to detailed and complex delivery through principle-based approaches; and (3) create a UN Ocean Agency alongside the post-2030 sustainable development agenda to advance the changes needed.

Nature-based solutions to adapt to climate change have attracted increasing interest in recent years and have developed in different directions. This study aims to provide an updated overview of this growing field, its main trends, and directions for future research. To this end, we conducted several analyses. First, we selected 258 papers from the Web of Science database, published between 2009 and 2023, and presented their profiles in terms of time, journals, geography, and research areas. Second, we performed a bibliometric co-word analysis, which identified four thematic clusters: (1) urban planning, (2) disaster risk reduction, (3) forest, and (4) biodiversity, providing a holistic view of the field. Third, we supplemented the bibliometric analyses with a literature review, to help interpret the themes in each thematic cluster and identify potential avenues for future research. We hope that this review will provide valuable information as a guide for both academics and practitioners.