Adaptive water governance seeks to increase a social-ecological system’s adaptive capacity in the face of uncertainty and change. This is especially important in non-linear dryland systems that are already exposed to water scarcity and increasing degradation. Conservation of water ecosystem services…

Rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns lead to heat waves and droughts occurring with greater frequency and intensity. This issue includes a collection of original research documenting how droughts and heatwaves, as well as their impacts on both natural and human systems, may change with…

The Lancet Planetary Health is a new online-only title in The Lancet’s growing family of specialty journals, joining The Lancet Public Health and The Lancet Global Health to provide a third pillar in The Lancet’s open-access programme. Building on the foundation of The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet…

What is planetary health? And what kind of science will this new journal be seeking? In The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health, planetary health was defined as the health of human civilisations and the natural systems on which they depend. To explain this idea in simpler…

Drought is a complex and recurring natural disaster that occurs throughout the world and often has negative impacts on many sectors of society. Drought monitoring is challenging given the complex spatio-temporal dimensions of drought and its severity. Traditionally, drought monitoring has relied…

Researchers have proposed a global roadmap for decarbonisation over the coming decades. The roadmap is based on the idea of a simple heuristic, described by the researchers as ‘carbon law’, of halving carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions every decade from 2020 to 2050. The researchers say that, if…

A new study has quantified the economic impact of reducing avoidable food waste in Germany, Poland and Spain. The researchers modelled impacts on production, GDP and employment. The results show that reducing food waste from households has the greatest impact, although policy measures should be…

The World Bank is pleased to release the 2018 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals. With over 180 maps and charts, the new publication shows the progress societies are making towards the 17 SDGs. It’s filled with annotated data visualizations, which can be reproducibly built from source code and…

Land degradation is becoming a serious environmental issue threatening fertile agricultural soils and other natural resources. There are many driving forces behind land degradation. The expansion of artificial surfaces due to various economic activities, such as housing, industry, and transport…

The cultivation of bioenergy plants at fertile, arable lands increasingly results in new land use conflicts with food production and cannot be considered as sustainable, therefore. Marginal lands have been frequently considered as potential alternative for producing bioenergy from biomass. However…

The European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) ensures public access to information on pollutant releases to the environment from Europe’s largest facilities. Updated E-PRTR data have recently been published by the EEA, including information on pollutant releases to the environment…

Land use has important consequences for the environment, public health, economic productivity, inequality and social segregation. Land use policies are often complex and require co-ordination across all levels of government as well as across policy sectors. Not surprisingly, land use decisions can…