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Investigating the sustainability of social–ecological systems in the context of climatic, economic and social changes requires novel science practises. Transdisciplinary research (TDR) presents an interesting approach on how science can interact with society in finding meaningful answers to wicked problems. Social–ecological systems in mountain areas are particularly relevant not only because of their serious vulnerability to global changes but also because of their efforts to move towards sustainability. The researchers' collective Perce-Neige strives to tackle these challenges and applies novel transdisciplinary approaches. The collective is composed of early career researchers coming from various disciplines, working on sustainable transitions in mountains. For a week, 12 early career researchers conducted TDR for joint problem framing with inhabitants and local institutions of the municipality of Gresse-en-Vercors in the French Alps. The objective was to facilitate the development of a common vision and initiate collective thinking for a sustainable future of the territoire. Participants (researchers and inhabitants) became acquainted with each other through different interfaces facilitating exchanges, reflections and co-constructions (collective walk, individual interviews, participatory workshops, informal daily exchanges). The research allowed us to capture different perspectives on local issues that cause conflicts, and then to discuss and identify needs and solutions. We aim to present and assess the methodology for joint problem framing developed by the collective. This paper presents the benefits of such a methodology for acculturating early career researchers to TDR, and for framing societal problems and reflecting on actions.

The Segura River basin in South-East Spain is home to aquatic and dry-land ecosystems of regional significance. Pressurised, over the course of the last five decades, by interests of agricultural origin, the basin is caught up in a persistent water crisis traversed by conflict and socio-ecological deterioration. This article presents a socio-ecological-system characterisation of the Segura River basin with a focus on the interactions between institutional performance and expectations on irrigation water supply. The contribution of this research is twofold: first, it provides a model that develops a conceptual articulation of a socio-ecological framework in the idiom of Systems Dynamics; second, it generates (both numerical and qualitative) policy-relevant insights into the basin's crisis, in a way that fully reflects its complexity. Our results indicate that ∼333.100 ha of drylands and agro-natural landscapes were lost to agriculture, and that groundwater overexploitation reached ∼500 Hm3 within the 1960-2021 modelling horizon. Our work accurately models the pervasive impacts of intensive agriculture expansion in the Segura basin and portrays some of the socio-ecological consequences of the hydraulic paradigm in Spain, raising crucial doubts on the dominant forms of water governance in the region.

In the context of global environmental change, radical policy change is often called for. Experts are frequently involved and can act as policy entrepreneurs to make such change happen. This paper presents an analysis of a historical case where radical policy change took place at large scale, namely the development of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). In this endeavor, experts were deeply embedded in the designing of radical new policies. First, we demonstrate for the first time how experts can act as policy entrepreneurs alongside the EU Commission, and insist on the importance of not neglecting the agency of experts in EU radical policy change. Second, we elaborate on the complexity of the interactions between the policy and politics streams of Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework. In his framework, Kingdon describes the policy process as three parallel streams (a problem, a policy and politics) where policy entrepreneurs are the ones ‘’making the coupling of the streams’’ (Kingdon, 1984, p188). However, we argue that there is more to understand from the actual processes that make the streams entangled and allow for policy change to become a reality. We propose the concept of transcoding from the STS literature to illustrate the action of policy entrepreneurs in bridging the policy and politics streams. With this concept, we intend to show the processes that translate scientifically endorsed approaches and understandings into policy decisions, and to open new research possibilities in complement to the Multiple Stream Framework.

Maintaining peace and conserving biodiversity hinge on an international system of cooperation codified in institutions, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brings recent progress to a crossroads. Against this backdrop, we address some implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the governance of biodiversity conservation both within and beyond Russia. The Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens the governance system for biodiversity conservation, as it pertains to Russia and beyond, due to three interacting factors: (i) isolation of Russia from the international system, (ii) halt and delay of international cooperation, and (iii) changes in international and domestic policy priorities. We recommend making the existing international system of governance for conserving biodiversity more resilient and adaptable, while aligning security agendas with biodiversity conservation goals.

This paper seeks to understand how pro-environmental food practices among women and men in the EU can be supported by considering the interlinkages between gender equality and environmental sustainability. A special aspect is that the role of gender equality is interpreted in terms of Schwartz's theory on national cultural values, which relates gender equality to cultures that emphasize intellectual autonomy and egalitarianism. The paper investigated how pro-environmental food practices (including meat reduction) among women and men correlated with their countries' national income level and its level of gender equality. It was a multilevel analysis of survey data from 27 countries (Eurobarometer 95.1, Spring 2021). Considering that studies about gender equality and the environment often find problematically high correlations between gender equality and national income, this study focused on political gender equality (i.e. women's representation in parliament), which had desirable characteristics. National income and political gender equality had complementary impacts on the adoption of pro-environmental food practices (including meat reduction). Men reported more target practices when living in richer countries; the same applied even more strongly to women when living in richer and more politically gender-balanced countries. It was concluded that women may have developed more autonomy by, inter alia, adopting pro-environmental food practices. At the level of individual behavior, this illustrates “mutually reinforcing dynamics” in the pursuit of gender equality and environmental sustainability goals.

Reliable water service delivery continues to be a complex global issue that is particularly challenging in rural communities. Despite billions of dollars of infrastructure interventions, sustainable water services remain out of reach for millions of people. Professionalized maintenance services have emerged as a service provision strategy to supplement the community-based rural water management approach. This study applies system dynamics modeling to assess the potential impact of scaling up professionalized maintenance services on piped water systems in Kitui County, Kenya. The study results show that over a 10 year simulation, calibrated with 21 months of empirical data and based on a range of key assumptions, delivery of professionalized maintenance services across the county may increase countywide functionality rates from 54% to over 83%, leading to a 67% increase in water production. Furthermore, the increase in preventive maintenance activities and proactive repairs can lead to less frequent major breakdowns and reduction in county government spending on major repairs by over 60%. However, current service fee income from communities accounts for 8% of the total cost of service, necessitating substantial sustained external financing or government subsidies to be financially viable at scale.

Meat reduction might become a new extension of the personal climate actions in the European Union (EU), but this development is not without challenges. Focusing on consumers, this paper investigates 1) how meat reduction is related to other climate actions and 2) how adopters of meat reduction and those who just take other actions differ in concerns about world problems and sociocultural characteristics. The data are from Eurobarometer 95.1 (Spring 2021). The analyses revealed that the adoption of meat reduction was related to the adoption of other climate actions, but that it was not on par with mainstream pro-environmental actions. Participants who incorporated meat reduction in their climate actions were more than the others motivated by broad environmental, social and public health concerns. Those who did not incorporate meat reduction scored lower on these concerns and might have been negatively affected by incongruences between the cultural meaning of meat reduction and their cultural identities in terms of right-wing positions, masculinity or social class. The results showed that meat reduction is part of an adoption process and that the Northwestern countries were somewhat further on in this process than the Southern and Eastern countries.

The role of water resources in conflict has been the centre of a polarized scientific debate on the connections between environmental and social sustainability. We investigate whether and how water availability, also in relation to water demand, increases the likelihood of violent conflict, and we analyse how hydrological factors influence social conflict dynamics involving non-state armed groups in the Lake Chad Basin. We combine hydrological and biophysical factors with information on socio-political processes. We use a novel physically based agro-hydrological model to produce water-availability and water-demand indicators to explore the conflict potential. By coupling a critical modelling perspective with a novel rendition of hydrological dynamics and statistical tools, we explore water–conflict interconnections in a broader hydrosocial framework. Our results show that, although water scarcity alone does not directly drive violent conflict, complex water-related interdependencies exist on multiple space–time scales. Analytical integration of fine-scale hydrological indicators may help deconstruct both mechanistic and relativist narratives, improve understanding of socio-hydrological complexity and move towards a comprehensive vision of socially and environmentally sustainable use of water and land.

Brexit has potentially wide-ranging implications for UK policy, although little is known about what these are yet. Now, post the transition period, is a good time to consider its actual impacts as opposed to what was expected by academics, and by proponents of Brexit. In the absence of any established theory of EU-exit, and drawing on insights from (de-)Europeanisation, Brexit energy and climate policy studies, and political economy, this article develops a framework to identify the impact of EU-exit on UK energy policy. This is applied to sustainable energy, an area in urgent need of policy development to meet legally binding national targets. We conclude that, so far, despite leaving various EU bodies there has been relatively little divergence from Europeanised policy; that new UK energy and climate policies, required to replace EU membership benefits, are relatively less effective; and that hard-pressed civil servants have been drawn away from other important policymaking tasks.

Oil and gas (O&G) companies, as key players in the contemporary global energy landscape, have evolved within the context of a dynamic interaction between states and markets. However, their role is being transformed radically by two successive “global shifts”: economic globalization—driving energy demand growth patterns—and climate change—driving energy system transformation and decarbonization, both of which require them to reconsider their business strategies. Using an interdisciplinary lens that draws on human geography, strategy and international business, and international political economy, we propose an integrated conceptual framework for two periods—the 1990s–early 2010s and the post-Paris Agreement era—to explore the nature of strategic responses by O&G companies to these global economic and environmental shifts. We illustrate the linkage of O&G companies' two strategies of (re-)globalization and decarbonization by the aspects of production, finance, and knowledge as internal structures. Energy security is one of the priorities in the macro external environment. It is becoming increasingly difficult for O&G companies to deal with current dilemmas: climate goals require a significant reduction in fossil fuel production and consumption, and pressures from governments, nongovernmental organizations, and investors threaten the long-term survival of O&G companies, while fossil fuel demand will remain high in the short to medium term. At the same time, the post-pandemic recovery and Russia's war in Ukraine are resulting in a re-assessment of the benefits of unfettered globalization. Therefore, global O&G companies face dual challenges in the new era of (re-)globalization and decarbonization and need to make changes to ensure their future viability.

The Half Earth (HE) and Sharing the Planet (SP) scenario narratives are two distinctly different scenarios on how to restore and conserve biodiversity while accounting for the need for agricultural production. Yet, the equity implications of both scenarios are not clear. We conducted a questionnaire to better understand what experts with various backgrounds perceive as the main equity implications of these scenarios. We find that, overall, distributive, recognitional, and procedural equity barriers are perceived as higher in the HE scenario, as is the possibility of reaching equity. Especially people depending on local biodiversity to sustain their livelihoods are perceived to face challenges due to inequities. Although equity risks are perceived to be lower in the SP scenario, the measures needed to achieve this scenario are seen as hard to implement, since existing economic and political power structures need to change. Some respondents perceive the SP scenario as anthropocentric, and therefore not equitable to non-humans. The equity perceptions are linked to the respondents’ attitudes to nature, their professional focus, and their view on equity in nature conservation and agriculture discussions and agreements today. These results indicate that it is important to recognise the different equity implications of the different scenarios and the challenge to provide equity implications for such scenarios. Explicitly recognising different equity understandings in scenario development and science-policy interfaces could lead to more inclusive policies.

Many oil majors have pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 while transitioning to clean energy. While achieving this requires transformative actions like downscaling hydrocarbon production, offsetting emissions with carbon credits is rapidly mainstreaming as a shortcut to decarbonisation. Although abundant research has contested the climate benefits of offsets, scholarship on oil majors’ climate actions has not examined their offsetting activity. We therefore focus on the world’s largest publicly traded majors — BP, Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil — to examine if their net-zero strategies reflect a shift away from fossil fuels and to assess their offsetting behaviour. We firstly use three indicators to examine (i) the scope of emissions covered, (ii) plans to scale down fossil-fuel production and (iii) reliance on offsets. We then leverage a novel dataset built from company and third-party documents, along with offset-registry data, to assess what offsets are used and how these link to core business activities. Results show that no major’s decarbonisation pathway encompasses a business-model transformation away from fossil fuels. This is evidenced by missing plans to curb the production and sales of hydrocarbons and by a reliance on offsets to reach net-zero emissions and to decarbonise energy products. Moreover, results point to questionable climate benefits for offsets, since most derive from historically implemented emissions-avoidance projects that do not physically remove atmospheric carbon in the present. These findings challenge the appropriateness of claims about ‘carbon-neutral’ hydrocarbons, showing how net-zero strategies omit the urgent task of curbing the supply of fossil fuels to the global market.

Salinization poses a major challenge for modern agriculture with considerable areas being salt-affected worldwide. However, these lands can be cultivated by applying saline agriculture, involving soil, water and salt-tolerant crop management methods. The agricultural use of saline soils helps in addressing food security in times of population growth and climate change. Therefore, there is a need to map saline soils and examine conditions under which saline agriculture can be implemented. The aim of this study is to identify locations and surface area of saline soils. The potential areas for saline agricultural production are mapped using the QGIS software with a focus on the most promising lands for saline agriculture. To identify these most promising areas, we apply criteria of soil salinity, soil fertility, soil pH, water availability, presence of irrigation equipment, as well as depleted water basins. Our results show that the total area of salt-affected soils equals 17 million km2, but the largest potential for saline agriculture lays in saline soils above 4 dS/m ECe in non-depleted water basins totalling to 2 million km2. We conclude that further socio-economic analysis is needed to fully determine countries which should be prioritized in exploring the future potential for sustainable food production.

Livestock systems are vital to socioeconomic livelihoods in mountain territories, yet quantitative analyses of their diverse modes of production beyond farm level are missing. We used the concept of nature's contributions to people to account for these various society–ecosystem interactions. We investigated the role of biophysical constraints, resources, and community-based institutions (CBIs) for agricultural production at municipal scale. We asked: What are the driving variables that govern the agricultural system at municipal scale in a mountain territory, and what is the role of CBIs? Based on qualitative research with local informants, we identified the most relevant resources for agricultural production in 53 municipalities that are part of a cheese-producing CBI in Maurienne Valley (French Alps). Correlation analyses showed how biophysical constraints and external drivers from tourism shape the agricultural management of ecosystems. The inductive clustering to 3 production typologies suggested that the CBIs could buffer resulting differences in economic outcomes. Our results display how such mixed-method analyses can inform policymaking in heterogeneous mountain territories.

Conflicts around access to, control over, and quality of water accompany mining projects all over the globe. Often, they are associated with high intensity as means of contestation range from verbal complaints to protest marches, civil disobedience and violent confrontations. While numerous case studies on water-related mining conflicts exist, scholarship that synthesizes insights remains rare. In order to better understand the dynamics that lead to the escalation of conflicts and to further theory development on the role of, e.g., political economic contexts, hydro-social conditions and social relationships, a systematic overview of the existing empirical evidence is needed. Our meta-study of 53 water and mining conflicts identifies several combinations of conditions that are tied to large-scale mobilization and the use of civil disobedience measures, sabotage or hunger strikes by environmental defenders. As our results show, raised stakes and ontological differences, e.g. in situations where water is essential for livelihoods and cultural and spiritual practices, play a role, in particular when coupled with a lack of meaningful participation. Discursive or physical coercion by the state or by private security forces also intensify mobilization rather than containing it while the role of international NGOs is more ambiguous. To identify explanatory scenarios, we conducted a two-step, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) based on data collected in a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Taking its data from published research, our study identifies a geographic bias towards Latin America in academic literature on water and mining conflicts and points out topical blind spots. By looking for conditions that are consistently associated with high-intensity conflicts, it also provides insights on priority areas of engagement for community leaders, policy-makers, and private sector and civil society representatives seeking to avoid the escalation of conflicts.

Research on global climate change governance is no longer primarily concerned with the international legal regime, state practice and its outcomes, but rather scrutinizes the intricate interactions between the public and the private in governing climate change. This broad trend has also taken center stage within the pages of INEA. Two decades after its establishment, we sketch the main theoretical debates, conceptual innovations and empirical findings on global climate change governance and survey the new generation of climate governance scholarship. In more detail, we sketch how climate governance research has developed into three innovative sub-debates, building on important conceptualizations and critical inquiries of earlier debates. Our aim is not so much to provide an all-encompassing assessment of global climate change governance scholarship in 2022, but rather to illustrate in what important ways current research is different from research in the early phase of INEA, and what we have learned in the process. First, we discuss scholarship on the bottom-up nature of climate governance, developing from earlier ideas on agency beyond the state and the transnationalization of governance arenas. Second, we review contributions that have more systematically engaged with the concept of governance architectures, resulting in a stimulating new academic debate on the characteristics of complex governance systems and the consequences of governance complexity and fragmentation. Third, we note a distinct normative turn in global environmental scholarship in general and global climate governance in particular, associated with question of access, accountability, allocation, fairness, justice and legitimacy. The assessment of each of these debates is centered around questions of effective and legitimate climate governance to counter the climate emergency. Finally, as a way of concluding, we critically reflect on our own scholarly shortcomings and suggest a modest remedy.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to adress interconnected global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and poverty reduction. Multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) - including public, private and civil society organizations - play an important role in implementing the 2030 Agenda (see SDG 17 on Partnerships for the goals) and might offer a vehicle for creating synergies between issue areas and thus bring about transformative change. This technical report maps and analyzes a sample of existing and recently concluded transnational MSPs with the potential to address multiple SDGs simultaneously. It provides a detailed description of the background, methodology, and key observations from building a data set of MSPs that work on two or more SDGs, serving as an empirical basis for the multi-year project Transformative partnerships for sustainable development: Assessing synergies, effectiveness, and legitimacy of the UN’s multi-stakeholder partnerships across SDGs to achieve the 2030 Agenda (Funded by Formas under grant number 2020-00418).

Climate change is expected to lead to increased occurrences of droughts, floods, and rising sea levels, which may result in soil and water salinisation, thereby affecting agricultural productivity and food and water security. To address this challenge, it will be necessary to adapt food systems by incorporating saline agricultural practices. One potential solution is the cultivation of salt-tolerant potato varieties, which have the potential to sustain global food security in areas affected by increasing salinisation. This report proposes a methodology for the process of stakeholder mapping for case studies of the (saline) food systems and applies it to the Dutch potato sector. This methodology can be transferred to other contexts and on other crops.This report employs a stakeholder analysis approach to identify and classify key actors in the Dutch potato industry, in order to understand the relationships and power dynamics between them. This study provides new insights into the barriers and opportunities facilitating change in farming practices related to saline agriculture. The applied methodology was adapted from existing methodologies (Lelea et al., 2014; Raum, 2018) and tailored to the specific context of the national potato industry in the Netherlands.The Dutch potato industry holds a strong global position, but stakeholders show less concern about salinisation than researchers outside of the industry. There is a lack of internal consensus about leadership and a feeling of lack of agency amongst stakeholders, making industry change difficult. According to the findings, a significant portion of stakeholders participate in various segments of the value chain, but there is a gap between the interest and influence of different stakeholder groups in the industry. Government institutions are seen as having high influence but low interest, while civil society actors are considered to have high interest but low influence. Additionally, farmers are perceived to have frictious relationships with retail, because of pricing power, and national government institutions due to opposing goals. Multiple stakeholder types have stated that at this point in time, innovations regarding salt-tolerant potato varieties are primarily interesting for export to countries with arid climates. Salinity is not a high priority on the agendas of farmers, as the current nitrogen crisis in the Netherlands is threatening the farmers' existence.To address and overcome some of these challenges, stakeholders need to engage in open and honest dialogue, build trust and respect, and commit to working together. Creating an inclusive and transparent process will enable all stakeholders to have a voice and contribute to the industry's evolution, which is crucial for sustainable development. The study suggests that awareness raising should increase the perceived severity of the salinisation issue to identify salinisation as a parallel problem that is also a threat to the viability of the food systems including potatoes. Challenges are exacerbated by a general feeling of lack of agency among stakeholders. Without clear leadership it is difficult to know who to target to facilitate change. Mutual understanding needs to increase in order to innovate the industry and henceforth move the industry forward to ensure its resilience and adaptive capacities to climate change.

Air pollution is a global challenge, and especially urban areas are particularly affected by acute episodes. Traditional approaches used to mitigate air pollution primarily consider the technical aspects of the problem but not the role of citizen behaviour and day-to-day practices. ClairCity, a Horizon 2020 funded project, created an impact assessment framework considering the role of citizen behaviour to create future scenarios, aiming to improve urban environments and the wellbeing and health of its inhabitants. This framework was applied to six pilot cases: Bristol, Amsterdam, Ljubljana, Sosnowiec, Aveiro Region and Liguria Region, considering three-time horizons: 2025, 2035 and 2050. The scenarios approach includes the Business As Usual (BAU) scenario and a Final Unified Policy Scenarios (FUPS) established by citizens, decision-makers, local planners and stakeholders based on data collected through a citizen and stakeholder co-creation process. Therefore, this paper aims to present the ClairCity outcomes, analysing the quantified impacts of selected measures in terms of emissions, air quality, population exposure, and health. Each case study has established a particular set of measures with different levels of ambition, therefore different levels of success were achieved towards the control and mitigation of their specific air pollution problems. The transport sector was the most addressed by the measures showing substantial improvements for NO2, already with the BAU scenarios, and overall, even better results when applying the citizen-led FUPS scenarios. In some cases, due to a lack of ambition for the residential and commercial sector, the results were not sufficient to fulfil the WHO guidelines. Overall, it was found in all cities that the co-created scenarios would lead to environmental improvements in terms of air quality and citizens’ health compared to the baseline year of 2015. However, in some cases, the health impacts were lower than air quality due to the implementation of the measures not affecting the most densely populated areas. Benefits from the FUPS comparing to the BAU scenario were found to be highest in Amsterdam and Bristol, with further NO2 and PM10 emission reductions around 10%–16% by 2025 and 19%–28% by 2050, compared to BAU.

Food production and consumption related environmental challenges have come to the forefront of policy discourse in the past decade. This links primarily to concerns in terms of agriculture fueling climate change, but also in terms of long-term food security and availability for growing populations. A proposed solution to these pressures at the urban scale is Vertical Farming (VF), in the understanding of this article, a high-yield form of controlled environment agriculture, staked on multiple layers, which promises to produce leafy greens and vegetables within cities, with potential to reduce the resource intensity of urban food production and consumption. The particular contextual conditions required for VF to be sustainable have not as of yet been holistically assessed. Accordingly, by analyzing these contextual conditions in the Global North, this research assesses how VF can be up-scaled for the sake of sustainability–particularly climate mitigation–by viewing urban food systems through the Multi-Level Perspective. The article presents three findings in relation to the up-scaling potential of VF. Firstly, singular VF interventions in cities should have further functions integrated at the scale of the farm for the sake of viability. Secondly, VF interventions carry the most potential for climate mitigation if they are viewed through urban-level systemic food planning, which sheds light on the contextual conditions needed for VF to contribute to sustainability. Finally, the globalized dynamics of the neoliberal political economy, and in turn the localized effects for food systems, have implications for VF that need to be taken into consideration in framing up-scaling policy.

Despite increased popularity of knowledge co-production as a research approach to address contemporary environmental issues, its implementation in science–policy contexts is not self-evident. In this paper, we illustrate how researchers at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (in Dutch: Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving (PBL)) ensured a fit between key features of knowledge co-production and conventional norms and customs for knowledge production processes at the science–policy interface while simultaneously challenging those norms to create space for knowledge co-production. Drawing on implementation science, we analyzed two types of alignment activities: negotiation of normative and relational norms and modification of co-production features. Based on three policy evaluation cases, we show that PBL researchers developed co-production capacity over time. They became more skilled at recognizing (un)conducive structures to knowledge co-production, negotiating such structures, and modifying co-production features without compromising co-production integrity. We argue that investment in these skills is required to negotiate space for knowledge co-production in science–policy settings.

Land grabbing typically leads to social and environmental harms

Agricultural large-scale land acquisitions have been linked with enhanced deforestation and land use change. Yet the extent to which transnational agricultural large-scale land acquisitions (TALSLAs) contribute to—or merely correlate with—deforestation, and the expected biodiversity impacts of the intended land use changes across ecosystems, remains unclear. We examine 178 georeferenced TALSLA locations in 40 countries to address this gap. While forest cover within TALSLAs decreased by 17% between 2000 and 2018 and became more fragmented, the spatio-temporal patterns of deforestation varied substantially across regions. While deforestation rates within initially forested TALSLAs were 1.5 (Asia) to 2 times (Africa) higher than immediately surrounding areas, we detected no such difference in Europe and Latin America. Our findings suggest that, whereas TALSLAs may have accelerated forest loss in Asia, a different mechanism might emerge in Africa where TALSLAs target areas already experiencing elevated deforestation. Regarding biodiversity (here focused on vertebrate species), we find that nearly all (91%) studied deals will likely experience substantial losses in relative species richness (−14.1% on average within each deal)—with mixed outcomes for relative abundance—due to the intended land use transitions. We also find that 39% of TALSLAs fall at least partially within biodiversity hotspots, placing these areas at heightened risk of biodiversity loss. Taken together, these findings suggest distinct regional differences in the nature of the association between TALSLAs and forest loss and provide new evidence of TALSLAs as an emerging threat to biodiversity in the Global South.

Energy security has risen to the top of political agendas since the war in Ukraine. As a consequence, one of the main pillars of the EU's REPowerEU plan is now to accelerate the clean energy transition. This paper highlights that the transition to a renewables-based energy system does not automatically ensure energy security. However, with the right strategy and incentives, the EU could become a place of greater safety.

Responding to current and future climate change demands urgent, transformative adaptation, yet in many policy systems inaction continues to prevail. This paper examines apparent resistance to policy change and the persistence of business-as-usual through a ‘lock-in perspective’, which means that attention is paid to how reinforcing mechanisms drive stabilisation and resistance in policy systems. Offering a fresh synthesis of known lock-in mechanisms in the literature, this paper explores the role of those mechanisms in two empirical cases of coastal adaptation: England (U.K.) and Schleswig-Holstein (Germany). While several known lock-mechanisms are observable, some are newly identified in this adaptation context. We offer a critical reflection on the added value of the lock-in perspective for understanding policy stability. In turn, the identification of self- and mutually reinforcing mechanisms provides a much-needed foundation for targeted policy interventions and efforts to ‘unlock’ climate adaptation pathways.

A set of newly defined environmental principles can advance the sustainability performance of economic frameworks such as industrial ecology, cradle-to-cradle, and the circular economy. Currently, the environmental sustainability of these frameworks is mainly derived from the application of efficiency principles such as waste reduction, or closing and narrowing production, and consumption loops. However, these same principles can bring, in some cases, unintended outcomes that are detrimental to the environment. Efficiency principles also fall short of environmental sustainability aspirations, doing little to contribute to addressing the causes of current global environmental crises. This paper examines 7 widely applicable principles aimed at explicit environmental sustainability: doing no harm to nature, minimising environmental damage, restoring/remediating environmental damage, net-positive impact, no net loss, maintaining the health of ecosystems, and continual environmental improvement. These principles could markedly improve efforts to actively pursue sustainability and foster new economic forms that address our current unsustainable trajectories.

Contains fulltext : 285216.pdf (Author’s version preprint ) (Open Access) Bending the curve of biodiversity loss is a key priority for humanity and requires urgent action. The rapid loss of biological diversity threatens human lives, livelihoods and well-being globally,and is reinforcing, and being reinforced by, climate breakdown2. In December 2022, the 15thConference of the Parties (COP15) of the Convention on Biological Diversity will be held inMontreal. It is essential that an ambitious, specific and measurable Global BiodiversityFramework is agreed at this COP. However, governments alone are unlikely to reverse negativetrends in biodiversity. We suggest that a Biodiversity Action Agenda that mobilizes nature recovery actions from across society -- including businesses, investors, civil society groups, and local communities -- should be included as a complement to governmental efforts. If governments can agree on a strong Framework, an Action Agenda can create productive links between multilateral and transnational actions, for example by leveraging capacities from multiple actors, implementing goals, demonstrating solutions, and spurring national governments towards greater ambition. If, however, governments fail to agree on an ambitious Framework,or the subsequent implementation of the agreement suffers from political backlash or adismantling of national biodiversity policies, the Action Agenda can help sustain action and build momentum. 28 november 2022 2 p.

The circular economy has attracted considerable attention also in relation to water, an indispensable element to the sustainment of life and a critical input resource for the world economy. Despite a growing body of research on the circular economy of water (CEW), a consistent terminology and a clear conceptualisation of CEW strategies are lacking. Without such aspects, decision-makers, scientists and professionals may be hindered in developing a shared understanding of problems and solutions and exploiting new opportunities in the domain of the CEW. Furthermore, we argue that water is a unique element in the circular economy because it is a resource, a product and a service with no equivalent in the economic system and should be considered and valued as such in the CEW. Accordingly, we provide the definition of the CEW as an economic framework for reducing, preserving and optimising the use of water through waste avoidance, efficient utilisation and quality retention while ensuring environmental protection and conservation. Building on an analysis of academic literature and cases studies, we outline and illustrate a set of nine CEW strategies, including Rethink, Avoid, Reduce, Replace, Reuse, Recycle, Cascade, Store and Recover. Finally, we identify normative (legislation), governance (roles and responsibilities) and implementation (barriers and opportunities for application) challenges that need to be addressed to facilitate the transition to a comprehensive CEW.

This study explored whether EU's new Farm to Fork strategy (F2F)—which aims to tackle climate change, protect the environment and preserve biodiversity in the pursuit of more sustainable food practices—moves in a direction that matches consumer concerns about global issues. A key point is that the traditional differences between the policy approaches related to climate change mitigation and to biodiversity protection, respectively, correspond to differences between environment-based and nature-based attitudes at an individual level. Data from Eurobarometer 92.4 (2019) provided a set of environmental concerns and two food-related pro-environmental actions (buying local products and making a diet change to more sustainable food). Consumer responses to the latter option were assumed to indicate steps in parallel with F2F. Two multinomial regression analyses were carried out separately in Northwestern European countries, and in Eastern and Southern European countries. In both analyses, climate change and species decline were distinct sources of consumer concern, which were—independent of one another—more strongly related to reporting both options than to one option only. It was concluded that the F2F policy is in line with consumer concerns about environment and nature and that this may create important new perspectives for policymakers, businesses and consumers.

This paper analyses behavioural patterns related to sustainable consumption and ecotourism, using the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu referring to social differentiation expressed through consumption. Our goal is to evaluate how the theoretical approach of Bourdieu can be used to analyse sustainable consumption in the tourism sector. We address this question by determining how different types of capital influence consumer choices. Firstly, we analyse the theoretical assumptions of Pierre Bourdieu’s framework relating to sustainable consumer choices using content analysis. Secondly, we conduct semi-structured expert interviews. Thirdly, we examine a case study of ecotourism. The results show that sustainable consumption in tourism is present in all social classes through diversified behaviour, although motivations for it differ considerably, and a minimum amount of a cultural capital is necessary. Based on Bourdieu’s framework, we derive four assumptions related to sustainable consumption subsequently confirmed in the interviews and the case study of ecotourism. The findings of this study provide a better understanding of factors influencing sustainable consumption, and will be useful for researchers, policymakers and business practitioners.

Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine sent shockwaves throughout Europe and has painfully exposed the continent's dependence on a geopolitical adversary. Energy is closely tied into the ongoing battle: Europe is committed to phasing out Russian fossil fuel imports, whilst Russia, in turn, has cut gas supplies to a number of countries and significantly reduced flows to others. Given historical tensions between delivering supply security and other social goals we analyse what energy policy responses to the crisis so far mean for: environmental sustainability, energy equity and social justice. In doing so, we reveal strong potential for an acceleration of clean energy supply across Europe, complications for fossil fuel phase out, negative knock-on effects for sustainable transitions in the Global South, significant implications for energy equity within and beyond Europe, and a relative return of the state as an energy actor. Reframing energy as a geopolitical security concern has, in acute crisis, tended to obfuscate and/or downplay other energy policy goals, raising a number of difficult questions for policymakers seeking to pursue lasting sustainable and equitable transitions.

The international fossil fuel divestment campaign is increasingly successfully promoting a new “anti-fossil fuel norm” (AFFN), according to which investors ought to withdraw investments from fossil fuel (or carbon-intensive) assets and reinvest in more sustainable, climate-friendly alternatives. At the outset of this campaign, in the early 2010s, its self-proclaimed objective was to take away the fossil fuel industry’s “social licence to operate” (SLO). This chapter offers a neo-Gramscian view as to how a radical divestment campaign has sought to delegitimize the role of fossil fuels and the industry. The neo-Gramscian interpretation of SLO provides a rich understanding of the discursive, relational, and material aspects of power in energy transitions. It shows how societal consent to elite practices – and not just the latter’s coercive power – is crucial in successfully maintaining or transitioning away from a fossil fuel-based society. The chapter traces the origins and analyzes the current state of the divestment campaign and the norm it promotes. It concludes that the campaign’s original “counterhegemonic” challenge has been accommodated to fit conventional narratives and has lost its most radical demands and elements and thus its most transformational potential

Protected areas are frequently used as an important governance approach for biodiversity conservation. Even though the total area of protected areas has increased over time, the coverage, quality of management and effectiveness of these areas are still suboptimal. A large body of literature identifies four main challenges that limit the effectiveness of protected areas: lack of stakeholder participation, insufficient organisational capacity to enforce rules, poor integration across social and ecological goals, and underdeveloped accountability mechanisms for assessing management procedures. To address these challenges, scholars and policymakers increasingly debate how to foster an integrated, inclusive, and transparent “whole of society” approach to conservation. We contribute to this debate by examining the role of international cooperative initiatives (ICIs), involving non-state and subnational actors operating across national borders to steer society towards a common goal. We identify 20 ICIs that work on protected areas and analyse their potential to address the four main challenges identified in protected areas, by examining their actor constellation, governance functions, goal alignment, and monitoring and reporting mechanisms. We find that ICIs working on protected areas have the potential to directly address challenges in protected areas related to lack of capacity and accountability mechanisms, and indirectly address challenges related to lack of participation and integration across goals. We discuss these findings in relation to scholarly debates in the global environmental governance and protected areas literature respectively, as well as, to policy debates over the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework within the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

How actors react to change is a crucial question for social scientists interested in global energy system transformation (EST). The global oil industry's response to the challenges associated with climate change and EST is a particular topic of discussion. Here, we argue for an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together insights from multiple disciplines within the social sciences that study oil companies, to further our understanding of what they are doing and why they are doing it. Although research on the political economy and socio-technical nature of EST has led to important insights, it tends to treat the global oil industry as a monolith with common interests and strategic objectives. We argue that the analytical and conceptual tools provided by the management and business literature can help unpack this ‘black box’. We explain how this is the case by exploring some of these tools and applying them to a novel heuristic, the ‘Transition Strategy Continuum’ that helps categorise and analyse the emerging strategies of the publicly-traded ‘International Oil Companies’ (IOCs). As such, we respond to the call for interdisciplinarity raised in the inaugural issue of this Journal. Ultimately, we want social scientists working on energy to take serious insights from other fields of inquiry that help illuminate the complexities of the task of transformation ahead for the IOCs and other related stakeholders.

© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.On the one hand, a large number of companies have committed to achieve net zero emissions and many of them foresee to offset some remaining emissions with carbon credits, suggesting a surge of future demand. Yet, the supply side of the voluntary carbon market is struggling to align its business model with the new legal architecture of the Paris Agreement. This article juxtaposes these two perspectives. It provides an overview of the plans of 482 major companies with some form of neutrality/net zero pledge and traces the struggle on the supply side of the voluntary carbon market to come up with a viable business model that ensures environmental integrity and contributes to achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Our analysis finds that if carbon credits are used to offset remaining emissions against neutrality objectives, these credits need to be accounted against the host countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to ensure environmental integrity. Yet, operationalizing this approach is challenging and will require innovative solutions and political support. Key policy insights There is a growing mismatch between the faith placed in carbon credits by private sector companies and the continued quest for a common position of the main suppliers of the voluntary carbon market. The voluntary carbon market has not yet found a way to align itself with the new legal architecture of the Paris Agreement in a credible and legitimate way. Public policy support at the national and international level will be needed to operationalize a robust approach for the market’s future activities.

Fully decarbonising global power supply is essential to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement. A wide range of inter- and transnational governance institutions exist that work towards the transformation of the power sector. But are these governance efforts sufficient to address the challenges? To address this question the article first identifies governance needs on the basis of systemic sector-specific transformation challenges and discusses the potential for international governance to address them. Second, the paper surveys existing inter- and transnational institutions and assess to what extent they exploit the potential of international governance. The analysis shows that many of the governance needs are already being satisfied to some extent, particularly with respect to the deployment of renewable energy. It also shows that a significant blind spot remains: the phase-out of fossil fuels for electricity generation. The detailed analysis enables us to identify options for enhancing the governance landscape.

Long before the perfectly timed one-two punch of an oil supply glut and spectacular demand destruction in 2020, the global oil industry was already facing structural challenges. In the context of the accelerating energy system transformation (EST), they include decarbonisation efforts to depress fossil fuel demand and an increasingly competitive renewable and low-carbon technologies. In combination with a post-pandemic ‘green recovery', these structural challenges will likely have a dramatic effect on the industry, particularly on international oil companies (IOCs). Compared to their nationally owned competitors, the transition risks for IOCs are much higher and therefore urgently require a strategic repositioning. In this chapter, we examine the transitions risks facing the IOCs in an age of decarbonisation and climate change, analyse their respective coping strategies and explain the difference in strategic approach among them. While some IOCs are doubling down on production, others are seeking to reinvent themselves as ‘integrated energy companies,' spanning a broad field of energy-related activities, including renewables. Clearly, much has changed since BP rebranded itself as ‘Beyond Petroleum' at the turn of the century. So, understanding whether the IOCs are finally seriously engaging with climate change and EST is crucial to comprehending the future of the industry.

A growing number of international and transnational cooperative initiatives, including thousands of state, non- and sub-state actors, engage in governance for biodiversity beyond the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). While this trend provides new opportunities for effective governance beyond the formal international regime, there is a need to better understand key characteristics of this new institutional landscape for governing biodiversity.This report presents an updated overview of the landscape of 388 international and transnational cooperative initiatives (ICIs) for biodiversity, examining the actor constellations, temporal dynamics of the initiatives and their governance functions. Furthermore, it focuses on the thematic scope of the initiatives addressing CBD objectives and programs, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), industry sectors and biodiversity threats, as well as geographic focus and location of ICIs’ headquarters. Additionally, the report analyses the accountability mechanisms of the ICIs, i.e., the mechanisms to hold actors responsible for their commitments and actions, across 388 initiatives, focusing on whether monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) frameworks are in place.The results show that the landscape of international biodiversity governance is dominated by public initiatives, but the number of hybrid ICIs, involving public, private and CSO actors, is increasing. The ICIs are predominantly involved in information sharing and networking activities. They focus on sustainable use of biological resources and key themes such as forests, marine and agriculture areas which is also reflected in industry sectors addressed. The main SDGs addressed by ICIs refer to terrestrial biodiversity, climate change and responsible production and consumption. Even though most of the ICIs operate on a global level, their actions focus on areas with biodiversity hotspots such as Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and Pacific as well as Latin America and Caribbean. Most of the headquarters are, however, located in Europe and North America. Finally, a majority of ICIs have established monitoring frameworks. Almost half of them publish progress reports and around one third conducts internal verification. At the same time, more sophisticated accountability mechanisms, such as external verification or sanctions, are implemented by lower numbers of ICIs.This analysis provides a better understanding of the institutional landscape for governing biodiversity including non- and sub-state actors. The report not only provides insights into the status quo but also points towards ambition levels and potential effectiveness of this type of governance. It offers useful insights for policy makers, environmental organisations or researchers.

Despite the efforts by national governments coordinated under the Convention on Biological Diversity, the state of biodiversity continues to deteriorate globally. One of the main reasons for the limited effectiveness of current biodiversity governance is believed to be the lack of sufficient and stable financial resources made available to halt biodiversity loss. In recent decades, funding for sustainable development has shifted from mainly public funding to more hybrid including both public and private sources of funding. In parallel, we see the emergence of hundreds of international cooperative initiatives (ICIs) across a wide range of environmental issue areas including biodiversity. These initiatives involve non-state and subnational actors (such as cities, regions, indigenous peoples and local communities, companies, and non-governmental organisations), oftentimes working in partnership with states and intergovernmental organisations. They operate across national borders and perform governance functions such as implementation of biodiversity projects, information provision, as well as providing funds to achieve common biodiversity goals. Yet, little is known about the role played by ICIs as sources of finance for halting biodiversity loss. In this report, we analyse types of sponsors supporting ICIs, the ICIs with a financing function, and their contribution to financing flows. In particular, we examine different types of financial initiatives and their potential to contribute to halting biodiversity loss through a set of illustrative case studies. When looking at how finance for biodiversity is obtained for the whole dataset of ICIs (n=388), we find that almost a half of the initiatives do not disclose their sponsors. Out of those that provide this information on their website, the majority has hybrid sponsors. Our findings for financing ICIs (n=61) show that the majority of them are led by public actors followed by hybrid ICIs. Some financing ICIs combine their function with other activities, most often with information sharing & networking and operational activities. Most financing ICIs operate globally, but also focus on regions with biodiversity hotspots. Thematically, they most often work on forest biodiversity, followed by agricultural and marine biodiversity. The ICIs score well when it comes to monitoring, reporting, and external verification. Additionally, almost half of the financing ICIs have at least three out of seven accountability mechanisms analysed in this study.For the three illustrative cases of the financing flows, we selected hybrid ICIs being the &Green Fund, the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, and the Global Fund for Coral Reefs. They differ as it comes to sources of funding and main beneficiaries, but all cooperate with a broad range of sponsors from both public and private domain. &Green Fund and the Global Fund for Coral Reefs use similar funding vehicles focusing on grants. Also, their target audience is similar with a wide range of actors including companies, civil society organisations and public institutions involved in the projects on their respective themes. Global Alliance for Banking on Values differs from two other examples. Its members are banks, and it focuses on changing banking standards, disseminating best practices and using their customers’ assets to always invest in socially and environmentally more sustainable ventures. Finally, we discuss our findings in the context of recent policy debates related to the financing for biodiversity protection.

Salinisation is one of the main challenges of contemporary agriculture threatening food and water security. Climate change with more persistent droughts, floods and sea-level rise is expected to increase this challenge making it one of the most common land degradation processes. At the same time, an increasingly complex institutional landscape has emerged across multiple areas of global environmental governance related to salinisation. This can be seen in a myriad of public, private, and hybrid international institutions coming together by creating transnational initiatives to address the issue of growing salinisation through saline agriculture. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to characterise the status quo and development of a governance landscape of cooperative initiatives for saline agriculture in Mediterranean and North Sea regions. The results show a few overarching trends in the sample of 99 initiatives selected for the analysis. We suggest that initiatives can play an important role in the governance landscape of saline agriculture and can contribute to the upscaling of saline agriculture by advancing the scientific research and participating in the policy debate. However, findings suggest that the fragmented landscape of initiatives is predominated by public actors and research institutions. This potentially hampers benefit sharing and upscaling opportunities. There is an increase in the number of cooperative initiatives focusing on saline agriculture over time, particularly in years 2019-2020, suggesting increased interest or need for these initiatives. Their main governance functions are operational activities followed by information sharing and networking. However, for upscaling more ICIs are needed that commit to funding & standards and commitments’ activities. Thematically, most of the initiatives focus on the development of new crop varieties and water and soil management practices. The key SDGs addressed by them are SDG2 “Zero hunger”, SDG13 “Climate action”, SDG6 “Clean water and sanitation” and SDG8 “Decent work and economic growth”. Our results indicate that most of the initiatives do not report publicly, but those with reports exhibit high verification rates. Implementation of these accountability mechanisms is crucial for tracking the performance of the initiatives in terms of output, outcome and impact. The lack of employment of these mechanisms might obstruct effectiveness. Furthermore, the short duration and research focus of the international and transnational cooperative initiatives indicate a discrepancy between science and practice, which could hamper upscaling opportunities. More focus should be put on mobilising and transferring knowledge in order to make it accessible to a wider audience, thus increasing uptake, implementation and impact. Interdependencies among the policies of other governance areas such as climate change or biodiversity allow for mutual learning. This exchange should not be limited to academic and public institutions, but include, inspire and empower all those who are affected by salinized lands in order to ensure community food security.

Viable pathways to universal safely managed drinking water access in rural Africa involve a blend of infrastructure types, service delivery arrangements, and sources of finance. Priorities are shaped by institutional and economic barriers and are often based on assumptions regarding user demand and revenue sustainability. Improved understanding of how alternative approaches affect revenue generated from user payments can enhance long-term viability and repayment capacity of rural piped water services. We analyse more than 3,900 monthly records from operators in Ghana, Rwanda, and Uganda and model revenue patterns for novel service area archetypes. Results indicate on and off premises connections exhibit complementary revenue patterns, with volumetric revenue determined by tariff level rather than connection type and waterpoints with the greatest dispensing capacity generating the most aggregate revenue. The prepaid credit payment approach, which is increasingly promoted to enhance revenue collection efficiency, is not associated with revenue advantages compared to pay-as-you-fetch and monthly billing approaches when tariff level is controlled. These patterns are recurrent at multi- and single country scales and across service areas where public and enterprise-led investment approaches to infrastructure development are taken, suggesting the findings may be applicable beyond the study domain. Infrastructure investment strategies can promote revenue and equity goals through off-site piped water, but more evidence is needed to understand the trade-offs of prepaid credit systems.

The Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) (the Post-2020 Framework) is expected to embody transformative change through the adoption of the framework’s “Theory of Change” (CBD, 2020). Its implementation must recognize that the global biodiversity governance architecture needs to transform to lead the required personal and social transformations, including shifts in values, beliefs and patterns of social behaviors (Chaffin et al., 2016), necessary to successfully tackle biodiversity loss. Against this backdrop, the overarching goal of this chapter is to analyze what needs to be transformed in global biodiversity governance, including institutional structures that shape values, beliefs and behavioral change. The chapter examines obstacles and opportunities for transformation, with the indirect objective of informing implementation of the Post-2020 Framework; at the time of writing, the CBD is expected to adopt the Post-2020 GBF in 2022.

Partnerships have long been presented as transformative and effective mechanisms to overcome challenges linked to the global governance of development. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and SDG 17 call for intensified involvement and engagement of partnerships in sustainable development, formalizing a role specifically for multi‐stakeholder partnerships (MSPs). In this context, transnational MSPs that enmesh public and private to finance development, continue to flourish as a hybrid model of governance. This paper seeks to critically assess the accountability issues linked to channelling development financing through transnational MSPs using an accountability matrix, based on responsibility, answerability and enforceability, applicable to the system‐level development cooperation/aid frameworks as well as to MSPs. The article then evaluates the accountability challenges and shortcomings arising from MSPs as development financing actors resulting in diffused responsibility, limited answerability and weak enforceability. Finally, the article outlines a research agenda and Policy recommendations to improve the accountability of MSPs when they finance development.

Since 2008, the call to ‘remunicipalise’ water resources has become a key strategy for water movements across Europe. Remunicipalisation aimed at opposing the new wave of privatisation programmes and water commodification incentivised under austerity frameworks. However, the water movements’ lack of direct engagement with questions of re/commoning resulted in under-explored links, in practitioner and scholarly arenas, between demands for water remunicipalisation and practices of commoning. This article brings into dialogue the bodies of literature on commoning and remunicipalisation. It examines the conditions which enable crossing the paradigm threshold from municipal governance, towards more collective and situated models of water governance rooted in practices of commoning. The article operationalises the concept of recommoning water to capture this process, and proposes an analytical definition grounded in a case study of water remunicipalisation in Terrassa, Spain. In 2019, Terrassa achieved remunicipalisation to create a citizen water observatory. The empirical findings demonstrate that water activists in Terassa’s Observatory are reclaiming and reproducing the commons on a daily basis through a process of experimentation with institutional bricolage and (re)negotiation of power and autonomy. This citizen-led observatory is ensuring that resources are shared in common, are used for the common good and are reproducing the commons. The study concludes that water remunicipalisation can act as an important step for enabling processes of recommoning. Nevertheless, the institutionalisation of recommoning water under a public management regime is confronted with multifaceted tensions that merit attention from both activists and policymakers.

Foreign investors have acquired approximately 90 million hectares of land for agriculture over the past two decades. The effects of these investments on local food security remain unknown. While additional cropland and intensified agriculture could potentially increase crop production, preferential targeting of prime agricultural land and transitions toward export-bound crops might affect local access to nutritious foods. We test these hypotheses in a global systematic analysis of the food security implications of existing land concessions. We combine agricultural, remote sensing, and household survey data (available in 11 sub-Saharan African countries) with georeferenced information on 160 land acquisitions in 39 countries. We find that the intended changes in cultivated crop types generally imply transitions toward energy-rich, but nutrient-poor, crops that are predominantly destined for export markets. Specific impacts on food production and access vary substantially across regions. Deals likely have little effect on food security in eastern Europe and Latin America, where they predominantly occur within agricultural areas with current export-oriented crops, and where agriculture would have both expanded and intensified regardless of the land deals. This contrasts with Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where deals are associated with both an expansion and intensification (in Asia) of crop production. Deals in these regions also shift production away from local staples and coincide with a gradually decreasing dietary diversity among the surveyed households in sub-Saharan Africa. Together, these findings point to a paradox, where land deals can simultaneously increase crop production and threaten local food security.

New energy communities that produce, store, trade and distribute renewable energy guided by innovative digital platforms are currently emerging in many EU member states. Expectations about these communities and their contribution to a ‘just engagement’ of citizens in energy transition are high. However, detailed monitoring of the degree to which these expectations have been realised thus far is often lacking. An innovative way to measure the just engagement of end-users as one of these expectations is based on criteria from environmental justice theories that have developed in recent years. This paper describes the initiation of seven pilot communities in five countries around a specific digital platform, and their assessment with a tailored environmental, justice-based framework. Based on the assessment—part of the ongoing Horizon 2020 project, ‘Lightness’—several challenges to just engagement are identified that are relevant for the project and beyond.