Annual Review of Environment and Resources - Volume 45, 2020
Volume 45, 2020
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Climate Change and Small Island Developing States
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 1–27More LessDespite their heterogeneity, small island developing states (SIDS) are recognized as being particularly at risk to climate change, and, as they share numerous common traits, the United Nations recognizes them as a special group. SIDS have been quite vocal in calling attention to the challenges they face from climate change and advocating for greater international ambition to limit global warming. Here, we unpack factors that are helpful in understanding the relationship between climate change and SIDS through a review of studies that span disciplines and methodologies. We assess patterns of hazards, exposure, and vulnerability; impacts and risks; awareness and knowledge; adaptation planning and implementation; mitigation; loss and damage; and climate justice to provide an overarching review of literature on climate change and SIDS.
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Soil Microbiomes Under Climate Change and Implications for Carbon Cycling
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 29–59More LessCommunities of soil microorganisms (soil microbiomes) play a major role in biogeochemical cycles and support of plant growth. Here we focus primarily on the roles that the soil microbiome plays in cycling soil organic carbon and the impact of climate change on the soil carbon cycle. We first discuss current challenges in understanding the roles carried out by highly diverse and heterogeneous soil microbiomes and review existing knowledge gaps in understanding how climate change will impact soil carbon cycling by the soil microbiome. Because soil microbiome stability is a key metric to understand as the climate changes, we discuss different aspects of stability, including resistance, resilience, and functional redundancy.We then review recent research pertaining to the impact of major climate perturbations on the soil microbiome and the functions that they carry out. Finally, we review new experimental methodologies and modeling approaches under development that should facilitate our understanding of the complex nature of the soil microbiome to better predict its future responses to climate change.
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The State of the World's Insects
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 61–82More LessThis article reviews the present state of insects, describing their taxonomic position, cost, and value as well as the threats to their well-being. Insects are an important source of both ecosystem services and ecosystem disservices. Recent studies have indicated a worrying decline in insect species, especially in flying insects in the northern temperate region, and this has spawned much media attention. Some decline has occurred, it is clear, due to agricultural intensification, urbanization, overuse of pesticides, and global climate change. A decline would seriously affect the ecosystem services that insects provide. However, there is too little data to warrant the belief that all insects are declining everywhere. There is a pressing need for more basic research on insect diversity in the context of a changing world.
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The Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Marine Ecosystems and Reliant Human Communities
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 83–112More LessRising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, along with agriculture and land-use practices are causing wholesale increases in seawater CO2 and inorganic carbon levels; reductions in pH; and alterations in acid-base chemistry of estuarine, coastal, and surface open-ocean waters. On the basis of laboratory experiments and field studies of naturally elevated CO2 marine environments, widespread biological impacts of human-driven ocean acidification have been posited, ranging from changes in organism physiology and population dynamics to altered communities and ecosystems. Acidification, in conjunction with other climate change–related environmental stresses, particularly under future climate change and further elevated atmospheric CO2 levels, potentially puts at risk many of the valuable ecosystem services that the ocean provides to society, such as fisheries, aquaculture, and shoreline protection. Thisreview emphasizes both current scientific understanding and knowledge gaps, highlighting directions for future research and recognizing the information needs of policymakers and stakeholders.
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Potential Climate Benefits of Digital Consumer Innovations
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 113–144More LessDigitalization has opened up a wealth of new goods and services with strong consumer appeal alongside potential emission-reduction benefits. Examples range from shared, on-demand electric mobility and peer-to-peer trading of electricity, food, and cars to grid-responsive smart appliances and heating systems. In this review, we identify an illustrative sample of 33 digital consumer innovations that challenge emission-intensive mainstream consumption practices in mobility, food, homes, and energy domains. Across these domains, digital innovations offer consumers a range of potentially appealing attributes from control, choice, and convenience to independence, interconnectedness, and integration with systems. We then compile quantitative estimates of change in activity, energy, or emissions as a result of consumers adopting digital innovations. This novel synthesis of the evidence base shows clear but variable potential emission-reduction benefits of digital consumer innovations. However, a small number of studies show emission increases from specific innovations as a result of induced demand or substitution effects that need careful management by public policy. We also consider how concurrent adoption of digital consumer innovations across mobility, food, homes, and energy domains can cause broader disruptive impacts on regulatory frameworks, norms, and infrastructures. We conclude by arguing for the importance of public policy in steering the digitalization of consumer goods and services toward low-carbon outcomes.
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The Harvest of Tropical Wildlife for Bushmeat and Traditional Medicine
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 145–170More LessBushmeat is not only an important source of fat, micronutrients, and macronutrients, but it also has medicinal uses. Extensive human–wildlife interactions may lead to pathogen exchange and trigger zoonotic infectious disease outbreaks such as severe acute respiratory syndrome, Ebola, and coronavirus disease 2019. In the tropics, bushmeat has become one of the most threatened resources due to widespread habitat loss and overexploitation, largely driven by increased global demand, weak governance, and lack of enforcement. Unsustainable harvesting, consumption, and production practices are common, although drivers are complex and intertwined and vary regionally, pointing to a looming rural nutrition security and wildlife conservation issue. Growing demand in fast urbanizing markets coupled with easy access fuels the illegal trade of bushmeat, medicinal products, and wildlife-based luxury goods. Although bushmeat contributes significantly to rural people's income and poverty alleviation, overharvesting impacts those who are most dependent on the forest. To balance the rural and culturalimportance of bushmeat with conservation and public health priorities, strategies to safeguard tropical biodiversity, sustainable harvest of wildlife with reduced health risk for nutrition and medicine are urgently needed.
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A Snapshot of the World's Groundwater Challenges
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 171–194More LessDepletion and pollution of groundwater, Earth's largest and most accessible freshwater stock, is a global sustainability concern. A changing climate, marked by more frequent and intense hydrologic extremes, poses threats to groundwater recharge and amplifies groundwater use. However, widespread human development and contamination of groundwater reservoirs pose an immediate threat of resource extinction with impacts in many regions with dense population or intensive agriculture. A rapid increase in global groundwater studies has emerged, but this has also highlighted the extreme paucity of data for substantive trend analyses and assessment of the state of the global resource. Noting the difficulty in seeing and measuring this typically invisible resource, we discuss factors that determine the current state of global groundwater, including the uncertainties accompanying data and modeling, with an eye to identifying emerging issues and the prospects for informing local to global resource management in critical regions. We comment on some prospective management strategies.
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Chemical Contamination of Drinking Water in Resource-Constrained Settings: Global Prevalence and Piloted Mitigation Strategies
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 195–226More LessChemical contamination of drinking water (including salinity) puts more than one billion people at risk of adverse health effects globally. Resource-constrained communities are the most affected and face unique challenges that require innovative safe water solutions. This review focuses on arsenic, fluoride, nitrates, lead, chromium, total dissolved solids, emerging organic contaminants, and, to a lesser extent, manganese, cadmium, selenium, and uranium. It covers contaminant prevalence, major health effects, and treatment technologies or avoidance strategies that have been proven effective in realistic water matrices and conditions. The review covers the levelized costs of water for pilot- and full-scale systems most relevant to resource-constrained communities, with a focus on component costs, including the costs of power systems, lifting water, waste management, and labor. These costs are not universally reported, but can be significant. The findingsare analyzed and discussed in the context of providing sustainable safe water solutions in resource-constrained settings.
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Advances Toward a Net-Zero Global Building Sector
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 227–269More LessThe building sector is responsible for 39% of process-related greenhouse gas emissions globally, making net- or nearly-zero energy buildings pivotal for reaching climate neutrality. This article reviews recent advances in key options and strategies for converting the building sector to be climate neutral. The evidence from the literature shows it is possible to achieve net- or nearly-zero energy building outcomes across the world in most building types and climates with systems, technologies, and skills that already exist, and at costs that are in the range of conventional buildings. Maximizing energy efficiency for all building energy uses is found as central to net-zero targets. Jurisdictions all over the world, including Brussels, New York, Vancouver, and Tyrol, have innovated visionary policies to catalyze themarket success of such buildings, with more than 7 million square meters of nearly-zero energy buildings erected in China alone in the past few years. Since embodied carbon in building materials can consume up to a half of the remaining 1.5°C carbon budget, this article reviews recent advances to minimize embodied energy and store carbon in building materials.
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Climate Decision-Making
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 271–303More LessClimate change decision-making has emerged in recent decades as an area of research and practice, expanding on an earlier focus on climate policy. Defined as the study of decisions relevant for climate change, it draws on developments in decision science, particularly advances in the study of cognitive and deliberative processes in individuals and organizations. The effects of climate, economic, social, and other framings on decision-making have been studied, often showing that nonclimate frames can be as effective as, or more effective than, climate frames in promoting decision-making and action. The concept of urgency, linked to the ideas of climate crisis and climate emergency, has taken on importance in recent years. Research on climate decision-making has influenced numerous areas of climate action, including nudges and other behavioral interventions, corporate social responsibility, and Indigenous decision-making. Areas of transformational change, such as strategic retreat in the face of sea-level rise, are emerging.
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Corruption and Anti-Corruption in Environmental and Resource Management
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 305–329More LessCorruption significantly affects the large majority of countries, and it has negative social and economic impacts. Its impacts on environmental and resource management (ERM) sectors are less well understood. We review corruption in the extractive industries, irrigation, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and conservation activities with a focus on the management of protected areas and the wildlife trade. There is significant evidence that corruption in ERM sectors is systemic. Corruption in these sectors has significant negative environmental and economic impacts, which can be expected to result in negative social impacts. Many of the anti-corruption policies proposed for the ERM sectors draw on the principal-agent theory. The political science literature on corruption found that theory to have limited application when corruption is systemic and the principal is corrupt. The analysis of corruption and anti-corruption in countries with systemic corruption should draw to a greater extent on collective action theory to identify more effective policies. We highlight some anti-corruption policies relevant to ERM sectors.
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Sustainability Science: Toward a Synthesis
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 331–386More LessThis review synthesizes diverse approaches that researchers have brought to bear on the challenge of sustainable development. We construct an integrated framework highlighting the union set of elements and relationships that those approaches have shown to be useful in explaining nature–society interactions in multiple contexts. Compelling evidence has accumulated that those interactions should be viewed as a globally interconnected, complex adaptive system in which heterogeneity, nonlinearity, and innovation play formative roles. The long-term evolution of that system cannot be predicted but can be understood and partially guided through dynamic interventions. Research has identified six capacities necessary to support such interventions in guiding development pathways toward sustainability. These are capacities to (a) measure sustainable development, (b) promote equity, (c) adapt to shocks and surprises, (d) transform the system into more sustainable development pathways, (e) link knowledge with action, and (f) devise governance arrangements that allow people to work together in exercising the other capacities.
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The Tropes of Celebrity Environmentalism
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 387–410More LessCelebrity advocacy for environmental causes has grown dramatically in recent decades. An examination of this expansion and the rise of causes such as climate change reveals the shifting politics and organization of advocacy. We address these changes to the construction and interpretation of celebrity advocacy and detail how they have produced a rich variety of environmental celebrity advocates. We also account for differences between legacy (e.g., radio, TV, newspapers) and online celebrities and their practices (e.g., hashtag publics, brandjacking, online communities). Environmental celebrity advocates’ performances can be divided into nine tropes, each characterized in part by the particular varieties of environmentalism that they promote. We present the tropes and discuss their five cross-cutting themes. We conclude with a set of questions for future research on celebrity environmentalism.
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Urban Climates and Climate Change
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 411–444More LessCities are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather episodes, which are expected to increase with climate change. Cities also influence their own local climate, for example, through the relative warming known as the urban heat island (UHI) effect. This review discusses urban climate features (even in complex terrain) and processes. We then present state-of-the-art methodologies on the generalization of a common urban neighborhood classification for UHI studies, as well as recent developments in observation systems and crowdsourcing approaches. We discuss new modeling paradigms pertinent to climate impact studies, with a focus on building energetics and urban vegetation. In combination with regional climate modeling, new methods benefit the variety of climate scenarios and models to provide pertinent information at urban scale. Finally, this article presents how recent research in urban climatology contributes to the global agenda on cities and climate change.
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Modeling Costs and Benefits of Energy Storage Systems
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 445–469More LessIn recent years, analytical tools and approaches to model the costs and benefits of energy storage have proliferated in parallel with the rapid growth in the energy storage market. Some analytical tools focus on the technologies themselves, with methods for projecting future energy storage technology costs and different cost metrics used to compare storage system designs. Other tools focus on the integration of storage into larger energy systems, including how to economically operate energy storage, estimate the air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions effects of storage, or understand how policy and market rules influence storage deployment and operation. Given the confluence of evolving technologies, policies, and systems, we highlight some key challenges for future energy storage models, including the use of imperfect information to make dispatch decisions for energy-limited storage technologies and estimating how different market structures will impact the deployment of additional energy storage.
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Reconciling Conflict and Cooperation in Environmental Governance: A Social Network Perspective
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 471–495More LessMost if not all environmental problems entail conflicts of interest. Yet, different actors and opposing coalitions often but certainly not always cooperate in solving these problems. Hence, processes of conflict and cooperation often work in tandem, albeit much of the scholarly literature tends to focus on either of these phenomena in isolation. Social network analysis (SNA) provides opportunities to study cooperation and conflict together. In this review, we demonstrate how SNA has increased our understanding of the promises and pitfalls of collaborative approaches in addressing environmental problems. The potential of SNA to investigate conflicts in environmental governance, however, remains largely underutilized. Furthermore, a network perspective is not restricted to the social domain. A multilevel social-ecological network perspective facilitates integration of social and environmental sciences in understanding how different patterns of resource access can trigger both cooperation and conflict.
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The Boundaries of the Planetary Boundary Framework: A Critical Appraisal of Approaches to Define a “Safe Operating Space” for Humanity
Vol. 45 (2020), pp. 497–521More LessIn 2009, a group of 29 scholars argued that we can identify a set of “planetary boundaries” that humanity must not cross at the cost of its own peril. This planetary boundaries framework has been influential in generating academic debate and in shaping research projects and policy recommendations worldwide. Yet, it has also come under heavy scrutiny and been criticized. What is today's overall significance and impact of the notion of planetary boundaries for earth system science and earth system governance? We review here the development of the concept and address several lines of criticism, from earth system science, development studies, and science and technology studies. We also examine some applications of the framework, discuss broader governance implications, and reflect on actual policy relevance. In concluding, we explore the most recent incarnation of the planetary boundaries framework in its avatar as earth system targets supported by an Earth Commission.
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Previous Volumes
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Volume 49 (2024)
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Volume 48 (2023)
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Volume 47 (2022)
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Volume 46 (2021)
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Volume 45 (2020)
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Volume 44 (2019)
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Volume 43 (2018)
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Volume 42 (2017)
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Volume 41 (2016)
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Volume 40 (2015)
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Volume 39 (2014)
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Volume 38 (2013)
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Volume 37 (2012)
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Volume 36 (2011)
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Volume 35 (2010)
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Volume 34 (2009)
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Volume 33 (2008)
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Volume 32 (2007)
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Volume 31 (2006)
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Volume 30 (2005)
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Volume 29 (2004)
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Volume 28 (2003)
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Volume 27 (2002)
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Volume 26 (2001)
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Volume 25 (2000)
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Volume 24 (1999)
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Volume 23 (1998)
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Volume 22 (1997)
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Volume 21 (1996)
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Volume 20 (1995)
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Volume 19 (1994)
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Volume 18 (1993)
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Volume 17 (1992)
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Volume 16 (1991)
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Volume 15 (1990)
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Volume 14 (1989)
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Volume 13 (1988)
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Volume 12 (1987)
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Volume 11 (1986)
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Volume 10 (1985)
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Volume 9 (1984)
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Volume 8 (1983)
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Volume 7 (1982)
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Volume 6 (1981)
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Volume 5 (1980)
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Volume 4 (1979)
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Volume 3 (1978)
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Volume 2 (1977)
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Volume 1 (1976)
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Volume 0 (1932)