One Earth最新文献

Countries in the tropics, and populations disadvantaged based on gender, ethnicity, and caste, are more vulnerable to extreme heat. Present-day conditions—livelihoods, access to shade, and housing—mediate capacities to adapt. Heat adaptation actions must engage with unequal heat risk by targeting vulnerable populations and recognizing unequal access to cooling.

In this warming world, excessive heat is burning cities from the south to the north. Cooling technologies have been available for decades, but many, like air conditioners, can themselves be a source of heat and emissions that exacerbate local heat island effects and contribute to climate change. Furthermore, cooling solutions are often out of reach for the most vulnerable people. This Voices asks: what is the path to sustainable cooling technologies for all?

Shikha Bhasin, senior advisor at Cool Coalition, United Nations Environment Programme, recently spoke with One Earth about building inclusive cooling capacity for a heat-resilient world. The views expressed by Shikha Bhasin are hers only and not necessarily those of the UNEP.

The complex processing of energy and matter by organisms that live in an ecosystem, known as ecosystem metabolism, determines the carbon sink strength of ecosystems and is fundamental to climate change mitigation strategies. To optimize the strategies, the response of ecosystem metabolism, here quantified as net ecosystem exchange (NEE), to global warming was assessed. Using numerous NEE and meteorological measurements from highly diverse ecosystems around the world, it is shown that NEE rapidly increases with increasing temperature, being predictable by a simple modified Arrhenius equation. Despite a high intra-annual NEE variation, the mean NEE over a few years approached zero at all sites. The results suggest that ecosystem metabolism is generally resilient to warming, which is explained by ecosystem metabolism following light and temperature interactions at the Earth’s surface. However, even if ecosystems might maintain their functioning without climate change mitigation actions, rapid biodiversity changes are likely under global warming.

To address the ongoing deterioration of marine ecosystems and its consequences on livelihood, the European Union (EU) now aims to achieve 30% coverage of marine protected areas (MPAs), with 10% under strict protection per region. Here, we provide the first assessment of protection levels of EU MPAs, describing the level of legal restrictions of activities using the MPA Guide framework. While MPAs covered 11.4% of EU national waters in 2022, 0.2% were fully or highly protected. As much as 86% of MPA coverage showed low levels of protection or would not be considered compatible with conservation objectives, as they allow industrial activities. Most MPA coverage showed minimal protection across member states, sea regions, and legal types of MPAs. The EU MPA network likely provides limited ecological outcomes. Reaching the EU’s 10% strict protection target will require radical changes to the regulation of activities in EU MPAs.

The honeybee Apis mellifera is one of the main pollinators in agroecosystems, and, consequently, its colonies are exposed to agrochemicals and more fragmented and homogeneous habitats. As a social insect, this could lead to an impairment of colony health and population growth. Here, behavioral, molecular, and toxicological approaches were performed in beehives located in an agricultural setting of the Argentine pampas to compare their global state at different times of crop management. Our results show that foraging bees were impaired in their sensory and cognitive abilities and the brain’s expression of several genes related to metabolic, immune, and neuronal processes associated with social behavior after crop flowering and pesticide application. These impairments suggest potential social consequences for pollinator colonies that inhabit these disturbed environments. To our knowledge, no previous study has reported the impaired effects of agricultural intensification on insect pollinators from an integrative neurobiological perspective under realistic field conditions.

It is urgent to acknowledge the challenges of achieving sustainable coastal development in the context of blue economy expansion. Thus, blue justice emerges, emphasizing the importance of adopting inclusive approaches to guide decision-making. Small-scale fishers (SSFs) end up facing challenges in this process, such as ocean grabbing, pollution, and exclusion from debate spheres. Here, we address the knowledge gap by investigating SSFs’ perspectives and conflicts related to coastal development to inform equitable and inclusive policy formation. Our findings highlight the multiple impacts on different fishing communities, including marine traffic, blast fishing, industries, and ports, emphasizing contextual conflicts associated with different levels of coastal development. This enables the assessment of equity and justice within the domains of blue economy and blue growth. Our study showcases the pivotal role of interdisciplinary research in addressing diverse pressures from coastal development and including local communities for an effective advance in understanding blue justice issues.

Ocean acidification is a grand challenge to sustainable ocean management. Tidal wetlands are distributed from the polar to the tropical domain and provide unique ecosystem services such as groundwater carbon export. The carbonate and bicarbonate of exported dissolved carbon represent total alkalinity and buffer ocean acidification. However, the magnitude and variability of the dissolved carbon discharge from groundwater to the coastal ocean are poorly understood. Here, we estimate groundwater dissolved carbon and total alkalinity discharge by combining data from 337 locations in tidal wetlands. The average annual groundwater total alkalinity and dissolved carbon discharge in global tidal wetlands reach 16.2 (0.1–77.9) and 20.1 (0.1–96.6) Tmol, respectively, of which 83.4% is exported as dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC). Future groundwater DIC discharge decreases by 9.02%–28.91% due to increasing evapotranspiration, changing rainfall regimes, and relative sea level rise. Our study suggests that tidal wetlands export over 30% of terrestrial dissolved carbon to the coastal ocean.

Growing multiple crops in rotation can increase the sustainability of agricultural systems and reduce risks from increasingly adverse weather. However, widespread adoption of diverse rotations is limited by economic uncertainty, lack of incentives, and limited information about long-term outcomes. Here, we combined 36,000 yield observations from 20 North American long-term cropping experiments (434 site-years) to assess how greater crop diversity impacts productivity of complete rotations and their component crops under varying growing conditions. Maize and soybean output increased as the number of species and rotation length increased, while results for complete rotations varied by site depending on which crops were present. Diverse rotations reduced rotation-level output at eight sites due to the addition of lower-output crops such as small grains, illustrating trade-offs. Diverse rotations positively impacted rotation-level output under poor growing conditions, which illustrates how diverse cropping systems can reduce the risk of crop loss in a changing climate.