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Biodiversity conservation is increasingly recognized as a main challenge for the sustainability agenda. With humans are at the epicentre of the biodiversity crisis, conserving nature requires changes in individual behaviour. This study reveals gaps regarding the incorporation of behaviour change into national biodiversity policy. A total of 1306 policy actions proposed by ten National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) from all world regions were coded for target actors, target behaviour and responsible agents as well as the policy options, intervention types and behavioural determinants listed in the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) framework. Results show that only 12% of the policy actions specified individual behaviours to be targeted, and only 3% of the policy actions were specific about how interventions and policies could enable behaviour change. Policy actions were aimed mostly at increasing people’s capabilities (i.e., providing information) or providing opportunities (i.e., resources), and rarely addressed the motivation of individuals.

Physiological liver cell replacement is central to maintaining the organ's high metabolic activity, although its characteristics are difficult to study in humans. Using retrospective radiocarbon (C-14) birth dating of cells, we report that human hepatocytes show continuous and lifelong turnover, allowing the liver to remain a young organ (average age

Whether payments for ecosystem services (PES) are effective and how they change the motivations of land and resource users in the long-term is still controversial. A study of a program in Ecuador provides encouraging results regarding what happens if payments stop.

Conservation efforts are increasingly supported by ecosystem service assessments. These assessments depend on complex multi-disciplinary methods, and rely on a number of assumptions which reduce complexity. If assumptions are ambiguous or inadequate, misconceptions and misinterpretations may arise when interpreting results of assessments. An interdisciplinary understanding of assumptions in ecosystem service science is needed to provide consistent conservation recommendations. Here, we synthesise and elaborate on 12 prevalent types of assumptions in ecosystem service assessments. These comprise conceptual and ethical foundations of the ecosystem service concept, assumptions on data collection, indication, mapping, and modelling, on socio-economic valuation and value aggregation, as well as about using assessment results for decision-making. We recommend future assessments to increase transparency about assumptions, and to test and validate them and their potential consequences on assessment reliability. This will support the taking up of assessment results in conservation science, policy and practice. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01379-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Energy system optimization models (ESOM) are widely used to inform about energy transition strategies. The heterogeneity of consumers, especially in the heat sector, is rarely considered in these model types. Integrating consumer heterogeneity and behavioral factors into ESOMs may generate new insights for energy policy. In this study a literature review was conducted, identifying empirical data on consumer behavior for adopting residential heating systems. This data was integrated into an ESOM for the German heat sector, combining established methods for integrating consumer heterogeneity and a novel approach for calculating indirect costs, representing behavioral factors. The incorporation of consumer choice leads to a higher diversity in technology market shares in a business as usual and an ambitious measures scenario. Especially, the future role of log wood technologies in the private household sector may have been underestimated in previous studies and should be discussed, when designing policies. Still, these findings need to be handled with care, since the empirical data basis and the methodological basis is limited.

Physiological liver cell replacement is central to maintaining the organ's high metabolic activity, although its characteristics are difficult to study in humans. Using retrospective 14 C birth dating of cells, we report that human hepatocytes show continuous and lifelong turnover, maintaining the liver a young organ (average age < 3 years ). Hepatocyte renewal is highly dependent on the ploidy level. Diploid hepatocytes show an seven-fold higher annual exchange rate than polyploid hepatocytes. These observations support the view that physiological liver cell renewal in humans is mainly dependent on diploid hepatocytes, whereas polyploid cells are compromised in their ability to divide. Moreover, cellular transitions between these two subpopulations are limited, with minimal contribution to the respective other ploidy class under homeostatic conditions. With these findings, we present a new integrated model of liver cell generation in humans that provides fundamental insights into liver cell turnover dynamics.

The coexistence of coherent and incoherent dynamics in a population of identically coupled oscillators is known as a chimera state 1,2 . Discovered in 2002 3 , this counterintuitive dynamical behaviour has inspired extensive theoretical and experimental activity 4–15 . The spiral wave chimera is a particularly remarkable chimera state, in which an ordered spiral wave rotates around a core consisting of asynchronous oscillators. Spiral wave chimeras were theoretically predicted in 2004 16 and numerically studied in a variety of systems 17–23 . Here, we report their experimental verification using large populations of nonlocally coupled Belousov–Zhabotinsky chemical oscillators 10,18 in a two-dimensional array. We characterize previously unreported spatiotemporal dynamics, including erratic motion of the asynchronous spiral core, growth and splitting of the cores, as well as the transition from the chimera state to disordered behaviour. Spiral wave chimeras are likely to occur in other systems with long-range interactions, such as cortical tissues 24 , cilia carpets 25 , SQUID metamaterials 26 and arrays of optomechanical oscillators 9 . A spiral chimera state, composed by an ordered spiral surrounding a core of asynchronous oscillators, is revealed in a large grid of chemical oscillators.

This article contributes to an understanding of the nature of sustainability transformation experiments. We compare these experiments with classical experiments in the natural and social sciences along three central dimensions: 1) aims related to knowledge production, 2) roles of experimenters and participants, and 3) unpredictability of outcomes. We look at how experiments are understood in transition management and reflexive governance – two influential theories in current thinking about sustainability transformations that highlight the importance of experimentation. We shed light on implicit assumptions within experimentation for sustainability, especially regarding normativity, unintended outcomes and the roles of different actors. The analysis points towards a need to better understand experiments that directly deal with the (multi-level) governance set-up to enable sustainability transformations. Overall, we argue that being aware of the nature of experiments allows specifying experimental processes, distinguishing them from other types of learning, and helps develop strategies to apply experimentation in meaningful ways in sustainability transformations.

The trend in the discourse around environmental protection towards arguments based on ecosystem services and monetary valuation has prompted considerable controversy among academics and practitioners concerned with conservation. This paper informs the debate by exploring which arguments are most effective in garnering support for environmental protection. In a survey-based online experiment, participants stated their level of (dis)approval of a large-scale hydropower dam project after being presented with various kinds of arguments and information about the environmental impacts. The results show that ecosystem service arguments reduced levels of approval of the dam significantly (i.e. they increased support for environmental protection). However, moral-ecological arguments for protecting the environment proved even more effective, while a combination of both types of arguments reduced the dam approval ratings the most. Including a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) with monetary valuation of the costs of losing ecosystem services altered dam approval upwards or downwards, depending on the outcome of the CBA. The approval rates of males, of older participants and of politically right-wing participants were particularly sensitive to the outcomes of monetary valuation. More research is needed to understand the short and long term influence of different environmental discourses on peoples' judgments and levels of environmental concern.

Correct estimates of cell proliferation rates are crucial for quantitative models of the development, maintenance and regeneration of tissues. Continuous labeling assays are used to infer proliferation rates in vivo. So far, the experimental and theoretical study of continuous labeling assays focused on the dynamics of the mean labeling-fraction but neglected stochastic effects. To study the dynamics of the labeling-fraction in detail and fully exploit the information hidden in fluctuations, we developed a probabilistic model of continuous labeling assays which incorporates biological variability at different levels, between cells within a tissue sample but also between multiple tissue samples. Using stochastic simulations, we find systematic shifts of the mean-labeling fraction due to variability in cell cycle lengths. Using simulated data as ground truth, we show that current inference methods can give biased proliferation rate estimates with an error of up to 40 %. We derive the analytical solution for the Likelihood of our probabilistic model. We use this solution to infer unbiased proliferation rate estimates in a parameter recovery study. Furthermore, we show that the biological variability on different levels can be disentangled from the fluctuations in the labeling data. We implemented our model and the unbiased parameter estimation method as an open source Python tool and provide an easy to use web service for cell cycle length estimation from continuous labeling assays (https://imc.zih.tu-dresden.de/cellcycle).

The energy transition requires policy makers to adopt a holistic view that also considers non-economic factors when developing cleaner technology deployment schemes. In particular, a broad knowledge base is required to ensure an efficient energetic use of the limited biomass potential. Energy system optimization models are widely used to inform decision makers about energy transition strategies. The heterogeneity of consumers, especially in the heat sector, is rarely considered in these models and therefore these models lack of completion to contribute to this holistic approach. In this study, a literature review was conducted to find empirical data on consumer behavior regarding the adoption of residential heating systems. This data was integrated into an optimization model for the German heat sector, combining established methods for integrating consumer heterogeneity with a novel approach for calculating indirect costs representing behavioral factors. The incorporation of consumer choice leads to a broader distribution of market shares of different technologies in both a “business-as-usual” scenario and an “ambitious measures” scenario. In particular, the future role of log wood technologies in the private household sector may have been underestimated in previous studies and should be discussed, when designing policies. With this study, the knowledge base for decision makers was extended to discuss the future efficient use of biomass within the German heat sector.

Appeals to companies to adopt more sustainable practices are typically either framed as a request to assume ‘responsibility’ towards society and the future of the planet, or as a ‘business case’ (BC) for sustainability. The business case discourse emphasizes how sustainable practices can enhance (financial) business performance. We conducted a survey-based online experiment with business professionals to empirically explore the effectiveness of the two discourse types in motivating business actors to adopt more sustainable practices. Our results suggest that professionals believe that the business case discourse is more effective in encouraging businesses to engage with sustainability than the responsibility discourse. However, exposure to the business case discourse in the experiment did not lead these professionals to state a stronger motivation or intention to act in favour of sustainability within their organization. Furthermore, compared to the responsibility discourse, an appeal based on a business case discourse resulted in less approval for pro-environmental investments when these could not be justified by reputational benefits. Since effective measures to improve corporate environmental performance do not always involve win-win situations, our results raise concerns about the use of the business case approach to encourage companies to adopt sustainable practices.

The paper seeks to advance our understanding of the extent to which the use of economic incentives can undermine (“crowd out”) or reinforce (“crowd in”) people's intrinsic motivations to engage in biodiversity and ecosystem conservation. We first synthesize and classify the psychological mechanisms behind motivation crowding effects. Then we conduct a systematic review of empirical studies that test for motivation crowding effects triggered by economic incentives to encourage nature conservation. Based on eighteen empirical studies, we identify evidence of motivation crowding out and, to a lesser extent, crowding in effects. Finally, we discuss the implications for environmental policy and research. We note that the limited comparability of results across studies, the lack of baseline information about pre-existing intrinsic motivations, and a complexity stemming from cultural and contextual heterogeneity appear to be the main challenges when it comes to establishing more conclusive evidence. We conclude that, as economic instruments for conservation are increasingly being used worldwide, it is crucial to assess existing intrinsic motivations and expected changes in people's motivational structures prior to large-scale implementation. We call for caution with economic incentives in situations involving considerable uncertainty regarding the detrimental impacts on intrinsic motivation.

There is a momentum towards finding financing solutions for halting deforestation at the landscape level for the benefit of climate, biodiversity and delivery of ecosystem services. The Unlocking Forest Finance (UFF) project has, between 2013 and 2018, worked on the development of innovative financing mechanisms for sustainable landscapes in three sub-national Amazon regions of Brazil (Acre and Mato Grosso) and Peru (San Martin). This paper describes the approach of the UFF project as a case study of sustainable landscape financing, and portrays the key evolutions during the process. Relying on a reflection and consultation process among project partners, the paper then derives a set of lessons for sustainable landscape finance. It illustrates the current mismatch between the demand side of private ‘impact’ investors (i.e., those who look for social and environmental impact of investments beyond financial return) and the supply side of sustainable land use investments on the ground. The paper discusses how ‘blended finance’ models that combine funding from commercial, public, and philanthropic sources could contribute to financing sustainable landscapes.

International audience; We study the influence of decision power on fairness in the division of gains from productive activity. In an experimental setting, two actors are involved in generating a gain, but only one contributes actively by completing a task. In three treatments, decision power to divide the gain is assigned to (1) the inactive, (2) both the inactive and the active, (3) the active participant. Results show that changes in decision power not only affect allocations in accordance with previous research, but that they also alter fairness perceptions. In particular, full decision power significantly enhances self-serving interpretations of fairness. We discuss implications for organizational design.

The paper employs laboratory experimentation to study the effect of competition on truth telling and trust in communication. A sequence of either competitive or cooperative interactions preceded an experimental communication game. In the game, informed advisors sent a recommendation to decision-makers who faced uncertainty about the consequences of their choice. While many advisors told the truth against their monetary self-interest, the propensity to tell the truth was unaffected by the contextual priming. In contrast, decision-makers trusted significantly less in a competitive context. The effect was strongest when they faced full uncertainty. The paper relates this result to psychological and neuro-economic findings on automatic information processing. The data of this study were largely in line with Subjective Equilibrium Analysis (Kalai and Lehrer, 1995).

Biodiversity in the Green Economy: Setting the stage 2. Biodiversity in the Green Economy: what biodiversity do we need? 3. Chapter Biodiversity and the Forestry Sector 4. Uncovering hidden trade-offs in the Green Economy: Biodiversity and the manufacturing, transport and renewable energy sectors 5. The multifaceted contribution of biodiversity to human wellbeing: Lessons from The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) Initiative 6. Promoting sustainable use of biodiversity in socio-ecological production landscapes 7. Biodiversity and ecosystem services in European cultural landscapes: Pathways, pitfalls, and perspectives 8. Guiding principles for green economic development in the marine environment: Insights from small-scale fisheries and marine protected areas 9. Green Infrastructure: A bridging concept between biodiversity conservation and the Green Economy 10. Organizational, management and accounting perspectives on biodiversity 11. Payments for ecosystem services as a mechanism to promote biodiversity conservation in a Green Economy: Potentials and limitations 12. REDD+ forest carbon investments, biodiversity and the promise of a Green Economy 13. Biodiversity governance: A global perspective from the Convention on Biological Diversity 14. Exploring barriers to the integration of biodiversity concerns across EU policy 15. Biodiversity and green governance in Brazil: Innovative solutions to target resources for conservation and equity 16. The Green Economy as an Opportunity to Improve U.S. Biodiversity Assistance 17. Biodiversity in the Green Economy: moving beyond the rhetoric

Seriously engaging with the needs, hardships, and aspirations of future generations is an emotional experience as much as an intellectual endeavor. In this essay we describe a guided visualization exercise used to overcome the emotional barriers that often prevent us from dealing effectively with intergenerational decisions. The meditation and dreaming technique was applied to a diverse group of researchers who engaged in a visualized encounter with future generations. Following the exercise, we concluded that a serious analysis of intergenerational conflict requires us to confront our own mortality. Also, somewhat surprisingly to workshop participants, our desire to become stewards of the planet was driven by our fear of death as well as our egoist yearning for immortality. We posit that imagining the unknown with visioning practices might increase our emotional resilience, and hence improve our ability to confront the burdens of intergenerational responsibility.

Recent research on the dynamics of moral behavior has documented two contrasting phenomena—moral consistency and moral balancing. Moral balancing refers to the phenomenon whereby behaving ethically or unethically decreases the likelihood of engaging in the same type of behavior again later. Moral consistency describes the opposite pattern—engaging in ethical or unethical behavior increases the likelihood of engaging in the same type of behavior later on. The three studies reported here supported the hypothesis that individuals’ ethical mind-set (i.e., outcome-based vs. rule-based) moderates the impact of an initial ethical or unethical act on the likelihood of behaving ethically on a subsequent occasion. More specifically, an outcome-based mind-set facilitated moral balancing, and a rule-based mind-set facilitated moral consistency.

Recent research on the dynamics of moral behavior has documented two contrasting phenomena - moral consistency and moral balancing. Moral balancing refers to the phenomenon whereby behaving (un)ethically decreases the likelihood of doing so again at a later time. Moral consistency describes the opposite pattern - engaging in (un)ethical behavior increases the likelihood of doing so later on. Three studies support the hypothesis that individuals' ethical mindset (i.e., outcome-based versus rule-based) moderates the impact of an initial (un)ethical act on the likelihood of behaving ethically in a subsequent occasion. More specifically, an outcome-based mindset facilitates moral balancing and a rule-based mindset facilitates moral consistency.

We study how the main business actor in the Inambari hydropower project in Peru (EGASUR) treats the biodiversity impacts of its planned operations. Selecting the choice of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) as the crucial decision, we complement an analysis of expected business interests with an ethical analysis. The analyses reveal that following prima facie business interests would lead to a “minimalist” EIA, which raises ethical issues both from a consequentialist and a deontological perspective. Based on observations from Peru, we find indicators that ethical issues may indeed have been neglected or denied by EGASUR and that a failure to anticipate and appropriately deal with possibly unethical aspects is underlying some of the increased opposition against the project. We argue that anticipatory ethical analysis can help companies make more sustainable business decisions.

Does ethical differentiation of products affect market behavior? We examined this issue in triopolistic experimental markets where producers set prices. One producer's costs were higher than the others. In two treatments, the additional costs were attributed to compliance with ethical guidelines. In the third, no justification was provided. Many participants playing the role of consumers reduced their experimental gains by purchasing the ethically differentiated product at a higher price ñ whether or not they knew the amount of extra cost. Individual differences were important (students of business/economics paid smaller premia than others). Finally, we speculate about the observed "demand function" for ethics and emphasize the use of experimental methodology to complement empirical studies designed to assess the potential market for ethically differentiated products.