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"Wicked problems" are complex to understand and challenging to teach. Our experience of teaching about environmental concerns in Aotearoa New Zealand suggests how these concepts are taught is more important for student learning than the nature of wicked problems themselves. By offering opportunities for students to co-develop their own situated knowledges about wicked problems, they can conceptualise and tackle them more effectively at their own pace and in their own experiential contexts. Here we identify and discuss approaches to teaching and learning that can be effectively applied to any wicked problem. We demonstrate a hopeful way to teach and learn about unwieldy and overwhelming issues that many of today's undergraduates will inevitably be expected to confront in the future. This paper provides a framework to engage students in a course, and tools for engendering active participation in situated and tangible learning experiences when teaching wicked problems. As lecturers teaching in a School of Environment in the disciplinary areas of geography, environmental science, science communication, and sustainability, we discuss the value and applications of these ideas across three levels of undergraduate teaching. We identify challenges that we have experienced and show how it is possible to turn these challenges into opportunities.

This research article outlines a provocation for diverse and experimentally open, situated approaches to exploring care and caring. The diversely positioned authors discuss this idea using the subject of soil, in the place and context of Aotearoa New Zealand. Little is known about the diversity of ways that everyday people value, or, have caring relationships for/with soil, among a plethora of research that positions soil ‘care’ around, for example, commercial food production, waste‐sinking, or property land value. To study diverse care in relation to soil, as with many relational subjects, requires equivalent diversity in the ways in which we might explore it. Here we outline the basis for diverse, situated methodologies that necessarily lead to a diversity of methods. This paper looks at the methodological imperatives that lead to exploring care, and discusses a variety of methods that generate different forms of ‘data’ with different forms of representation of that care. We observe that to holistically observe care relations with soil requires a diversity of methodologies, inherently ontological and epistemological – worldmaking. We discuss situated and enactive, affective approaches of Kaupapa Māori enquiry, monitoring and arts‐based approaches to ‘measure’ soil care taking place, in place, and contextualise this with our own author positionality. We discuss this suite of experimental, reflexive, affective and responsive ways to measure soil care that are contingent on that being cared about, for, with and by, and which reciprocally give care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the implications of climate change for Aotearoa (New Zealand) remain unclear. To identify so-far unseen or understudied threats and opportunities related to climate change we applied a horizon-scanning process. First, we collated 171 threats and opportunities across our diverse fields of research. We then scored each item for novelty and potential impact and finally reduced the list to ten threats and ten opportunities through a prioritisation process. Within the 20 items presented in this paper, we uncover a range of climate-related costs and benefits. Unexpected opportunities evolve from economic reorganisation and changes to perspectives. The threats we highlight include the overall failure to interconnect siloed policy responses, as well as those relating to extreme events and feedbacks, as well as pressures that undermine the coherence of society. A major theme of our work is that climate change effects in Aotearoa are likely to transgress the boundaries of research disciplines, industry sectors and policy systems, emphasising the importance of developing transdisciplinary methods and approaches. We use this insight to connect potential responses to climate change with Aotearoa's culture and geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What ethico‐politics are we complicit in when we eat insects? Or produce them for feed? In this article we think through underexplored ideas of human‐insect response‐abilities, or 'care' in the acts of 'producing' insects that are to be: eaten by humans or non‐humans; or, enrolled in eating other species for environmental 'management'. Rather than merely passive recipients of human care, we think through insect agency to highlight the affective capacities of insects in acts of human to more‐than‐human reciprocal care. Drawing on a qualitative study of diverse insect‐work in Aotearoa New Zealand, we demonstrate how insects are recognised as active in their caregiving processes, and what this might mean for our right relations with insects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a perspective on the ubiquity of PFAS (a suite of unique per‐ and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or 'forever chemicals') as toxic, pervasive and environmentally persistent more‐than‐human agents. We situate our discussion of these more‐than‐human contaminants in our location of Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), a post‐production, post‐consumption contaminated site. We therefore make an Antipodean contribution to PFAS research—a predominantly North American/European body of work—providing an account of the specific landmasses, cultural contexts and regulation here, while also noting simultaneous entanglements with the global environment. In dealing with this group of contaminants, we identify opportunities for Aotearoa NZ's regulatory and management processes to consider the more‐than‐human theorising of aspects of 'the natural world', not for their utility but for the intrinsic value of more‐than‐human lives, and in order to do regulation, policy and practice differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of ethynylchalcogenophenes and their platinum complexes prepared via a developed in situ deprotection-dehydro-halogenation reaction which exhibit unprecedented long-range heteronuclear coupling and strong evidence for electronic and nuclear communication is reported.

The physical properties of natural organic matter (NOM) flocs, such as size, growth rate, and strength, were investigated using a laser diffraction particle sizing device. Conditions were set such that varying carbon coagulant ratio and zeta potential could both be investigated. Results demonstrated a link between zeta potential and coagulation and flocculation performance, with the production of strong flocs and low residual concentrations when the zeta potential was minimized. The overall strength of the connection points within the floc were determined by a combination of steric interactions, polymer bridging, van der Waals forces, and electrostatic forces. Hence, both dose ratio and zeta potential are important in understanding floc properties. Floc growth was dominated by dose ratio, whereas the response to elevated shear was strongly related to zeta potential. The steady-state floc size was a combination of both factors. This allowed the continued development of a qualitative model in order to engineer optimal floc properties when coagulating NOM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]