One Earth最新文献

Dr. Lara Steil is the Fire Management Officer in the Forestry Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Prior to her position at FAO, she coordinated efforts at Brazil’s National Center for Wildfire Prevention and Suppression to promote national and international collaboration related to integrated fire management. Working for FAO, she has led the development of the Global Fire Management Hub since 2023. The views of Dr. Steil are hers only and do not necessarily reflect those of the FAO.

As the international community strives to conserve 30% of Earth’s lands and waters by 2030, the full extent of area-based conservation remains unclear. Official databases do not fully recognize and track the diversity of conservation-relevant governance systems, hindering conservation research, policy, planning, and action. Here, we describe and test an inclusive, empirically grounded approach to documenting area-based governance systems that potentially advance biodiversity conservation. Among Amazonian countries, we identify greater area coverage and diversity of conservation governance systems than official databases. We further illustrate the relevance of this approach using global examples of under-recognized conservation governance systems. Our findings highlight the need for an inclusive, empirically grounded inventory that reflects the full diversity of area-based conservation systems. We recommend researchers, governments, non-state actors, and donors to adopt similar inventories to increase feasibility, transparency, and inclusivity as a foundational component of global efforts to fulfill international commitments and create a nature-positive future.

Maintaining newly re-established forests is an important policy and challenge for ecosystem restoration and climate-change mitigation. However, a global assessment of canopy structure in regenerating forests under different management and whether they are developing toward that of intact forests is lacking, impeding the understanding of their roles in carbon cycling and biodiversity recovery. Here we present the first near-global assessment of regenerating forest canopy structure at a 1-km resolution and its progress toward attaining intact forest characteristics. We show that canopy structure in unmanaged naturally regenerating forests more closely resemble intact forests than managed naturally regenerating forests and planted forests, but they are more susceptible to climate and human stress. Meanwhile, managed naturally regenerating forests experience substantial re-clearance. Our findings underscore the high ecological recovery potential of naturally regenerating forests and call for urgent action to enhance socio-ecological conditions for their persistence, unlocking their potential in sustainable development.

Wildlife and zoonotic diseases are increasingly impacting human society, the food chain, and wildlife; therefore, proactive mitigation tools for predicting large-scale risk of the relevant pathogens are urgently needed. Birds and bats are large-scale disease reservoirs and transmitters. However, holistic understanding for which bird and bat species act as reservoirs for pathogens remains understudied. Here, we test the extent to which the features related to the mobile species and local climate identify reservoir hosts for the 18 most-sampled pathogens across Europe. Species with slower pace of life (i.e., larger bodied and longer lived), sedentary species, and forest species had high pathogen prevalence. Temperature was the most important predictor for pathogen prevalence, but its effects varied in different directions. Overall, host species traits and climatic gradients robustly predicted pathogen prevalence, especially for non-vector-transmitted pathogens. We offer a data-driven basis for developing targeted interventions to mitigate impacts of zoonotic diseases, particularly in the face of climate change.

As conservation initiatives expand in response to biodiversity loss, there remains limited understanding about what forms of governance and roles for different actors produce the best ecological outcomes. Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ (IPs’ and LCs’) roles extend beyond participation to more equitable governance based on relative control and recognition of their values and institutions, but the relationship with conservation outcomes remains unclear. We review 648 empirical studies to develop a typology of IP and LC roles in governance and, for a subsample of 170, analyze relationships with reported ecological outcomes. The findings reveal that more equitable governance, based on equal partnership or primary control for IPs and LCs, are associated with significantly more positive ecological outcomes. This carries important implications, including for actions toward the Global Biodiversity Framework targets, suggesting a need to elevate the role of IPs and LCs to conservation leaders while respecting their rights and customary institutions.

Plastic waste disposal is mounting, with consequences for both environmental and human wellbeing. Addressing the plastic waste challenge through chemically upcycling waste to other products is gaining momentum but can have trade-offs. For example, the conversion of plastic waste into hydrogen rich gas can be achieved via catalytic steam, but this process can release large quantities of CO₂ (∼12 kg CO₂ per 1 kg H₂ production). High-performance bifunctional catalysts, such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs), offer a potential solution, but suppressing CO₂ emissions without compromising H₂-rich gas yield remains challenging. Here, we synthesize a new CNTs-bridging nanocomposite by integrating Ni nanoparticles with HY zeolite. Employing this bifunctional CNTs-bridging nanocomposite in the catalytic steam reforming of polyethylene can achieve high-quality H₂ yields of up to 2,340 mL/g_plastic and a 77% reduction in CO₂ emissions (1.68 g CO₂ per 1 g H₂ production). This work introduces an innovative CNTs-bridging strategy to valorize plastic waste into high-quality H₂-rich syngas while suppressing CO₂ emissions.

To address the climate crisis, it is important to accelerate social tipping points in the adoption of sustainable behaviors. Social tipping points describe the process whereby small changes trigger self-perpetuating feedback loops and produce a fundamental transformation in the social system. The current literature does not adequately address how the moralized nature of sustainable behaviors could lead to unique tipping trajectories. In this Perspective, we propose a dynamic model of moralized social change that provides insights on how novel sustainable behaviors spread over society and how to speed up this process. Although moralization may initially generate social friction that delays tipping points, it can accelerate change at later stages by increasing social pressure on laggards. By implementing early system-level changes, policymakers can help reduce the initial inertia created by moralization and accelerate social tipping points. We discuss how our model can inform the decisions of activists, policymakers, professionals, and researchers.

Land-use change (LUC) is a major source of global anthropogenic carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. However, current estimates of LUC-induced emissions vary widely with differences in data and models, making it challenging to identify and manage emissions hotspots by location and LUC activity. Here, we estimated spatially explicit carbon fluxes associated with global major gross land-use transitions based on a new bookkeeping model (i.e., LUCE). Between 1961 and 2020, LUC induced 215 and 142 Pg C of global carbon emissions and removals, respectively, resulting in average net emissions (E_LUC) of 1.21 Pg C year⁻¹. Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa dominated global E_LUC with 69% of 60-year cumulative emissions, or about 86% between 2001 and 2020. Forest-related LUC activities (e.g., deforestation, reforestation) contributed largely to both regional and global carbon fluxes. Our findings shed new light on identifying LUC-induced emissions hotspots and managing land for climate mitigation and conservation.