• Energy Research
• natural sciences close
• 13. Climate action close
• 15. Life on land close
• 6. Clean water close
• NL close

AbstractWe conducted a systematic review of the available peer-reviewed literature that specifically focuses on the combination of sustainability and gender. We analyzed the existing peer-reviewed research regarding the extent to which gender plays a role in the empirical literature, how this is methodologically collected and what understanding of gender is applied in those articles. Our aim is to provide an overview of the current most common fields of research and thus show in which areas gender is already being included in the sustainability sciences and to what extent and in which areas this inclusion has not yet taken place or has only taken place to a limited extent. We identified 1054 papers that matched our criteria and conducted research on at least one sustainable development goal and gender research. Within these papers (i), the overall number of countries where lead authors were located was very high (91 countries). While the majority of lead authors were located in the Global North, less than a third of the articles were led by authors located in the Global South. Furthermore, gender is often just used as a category of empirical analysis rather than a research focus. We were able to identify (ii) a lack in coherent framing of relevant terms. Often no definition of sustainability was given, and only the sustainability goals (SDGs or MDGs) were used as a framework to refer to sustainability. Both gender and sustainability were often used as key words without being specifically addressed. Concerning the knowledge types of sustainability, our expectation that system knowledge dominates the literature was confirmed. While a problem orientation dominates much of the discourse, only a few papers focus on normative or transformative knowledge. (iii) Furthermore, the investigated literature was mainly contributing to few SDGs, with SDG 5 ‘Gender Equality’ accounting for 83% of all contributions, followed by SDG 8 ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth’ (21%), SDG 3 ‘Good Health and Well-being’ (15%) and SDG 4 ‘Quality Education’ (12%). We were additionally able to identify seven research clusters in the landscape of gender in sustainability science. (iv) A broad range of diverse methods was utilized that allow us to approximate different forms of knowledge. Yet within different research clusters, the spectrum of methodologies is rather homogeneous. (v) Overall, in most papers gender is conceptualized in binary terms. In most cases, the research is explicitly about women, running the risk that gender research in sustainability sciences grows into a synonym for women's studies.

Worldwide, anthropogenic activities threaten surface water quality by aggravating eutrophication and increasing total nitrogen to total phosphorus (TN:TP) ratios. In hydrologically connected systems, water quality management may benefit from in-ecosystem nutrient retention by preventing nutrient transport to downstream systems. However, nutrient retention may also alter TN:TP ratios with unforeseen consequences for downstream water quality. Here, we aim to increase understanding of how nutrient retention may influence nutrient transport to downstream systems to improve long-term water quality management. We analyzed lake ecosystem state, in-lake nutrient retention, and nutrient transport (ratios) for 3482 Chinese lakes using the lake process-based ecosystem model PCLake+. We compared a low climate change and sustainability-, and a high climate change and economy-focused scenario for 2050 against 2012. In both scenarios, the effect of nutrient input reduction outweighs that of temperature rise, resulting in more lakes with good ecological water quality (i.e., macrophyte-dominated) than in 2012. Generally, the sustainability-focused scenario shows a more promising future for water quality than the economy-focused scenario. Nevertheless, most lakes remain phytoplankton-dominated. The shift to more macrophyte-dominated lakes in 2050 is accompanied by higher nutrient retention fractions and less nutrient transport to downstream waterbodies. In-lake nutrient retention also alters the water's TN:TP ratio, depending on the inflow TN:TP ratio and the ecosystem state. In 2050 higher TN:TP ratios are expected in the outflows of lakes than in 2012, especially for the sustainability-focused scenario with strong TP loading reduction. However, the downstream impact of increased TN:TP ratios depends on actual nutrient loadings and the limiting nutrient in the receiving system. We conclude that nutrient input reductions, improved water quality, higher in-lake nutrient retention fractions, and lower nutrient transport to downstream waterbodies go hand in hand. Therefore, water quality management could benefit even more from nutrient pollution reduction than one would expect at first sight.

In the plight for sustainable development and to support net zero ambitions for climate change mitigation, a broad range of aeration strategies have been developed with the hope of improving efficiency to minimize environmental and economic costs associated with the wastewater treatment processes. However, a balance is levied between reducing oxygen availability and hindering aerobic processes thus compromising performance. In the present work, we evaluate and compare the sustainability of a range of investigated strategies including continuous aeration (CA) at different dissolved oxygen (DO) setpoints (0.5 mg/L, 2.5 mg/L, 4.5 mg/L) and intermittent aeration (IA) at different oxic-anoxic portions (2.5 h on/0.5 h off, 2.0 h on/1.0 h off, 1.5 h on/1.0 h off). To achieve this, an eco-efficiency assessment is performed based on the results of previous life cycle impact and costing analyses for each strategy, while also incorporating a third factor to account for their respective treatment performance. The results demonstrate a clear pattern of increased sustainability for the IA strategies (0.54–0.56 Pt/m3), compared to the CA strategies (0.76–0.77 Pt/m3). While only negligible difference was observed within each aeration type, the trade-off between environmental and economic efficiency and treatment performance was distinct in CA strategies. At the individual pollutant level, IA strategies demonstrated decreasing sustainability for total phosphorous (TP) removal as the anoxic cycle portion increased, while CA at 0.5 mg/L was shown to be the most sustainable strategy for the removal of this pollutant (0.61 Pt/m3). Further work is suggested to incorporate the relative N2O emissions generated by each strategy and to investigate other strategies based on automated control. Sanitary Engineering

The IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories provide default methodologies for estimating emissions of the most important greenhouse gases at a national scale. The methodology for estimating emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) from agriculture was revised in 1996 by an international working group. Here we summarize this new methodology and apply it to the global data. The new method aims at assessing the full nitrogen cycle and takes into account N2O formation in agricultural fields (direct emissions), animal waste management systems (AWMSs) as well as indirect emissions taking place at remote places after nitrogen is lost from the agricultural fields. Using the IPCC method, we estimated that global agricultural N2O emissions almost doubled between 1960 (3.5 Tg N2O-N) and 1994 (6.2 Tg N2O-N). Direct emissions, animal waste management systems and indirect emissions make about equal contribution to total current emissions.

AbstractAlthough the role that Pleistocene glacial cycles have played in shaping the present biota of oceanic islands world‐wide has long been recognized, their geographical, biogeographical and ecological implications have not yet been fully incorporated within existing biogeographical models. Here we summarize the different types of impacts that glacial cycles may have had on oceanic islands, including cyclic changes in climate, shifts in marine currents and wind regimes and, especially, cycles of sea level change. The latter have affected geographical parameters such as island area, isolation and elevation. They have also influenced the configurations of archipelagos via island fusion and fission, and cycles of seamount emergence and submergence. We hypothesize that these sea level cycles have had significant impacts on the biogeographical processes shaping oceanic island biotas, influencing the rates and patterns of immigration and extinction and hence species richness. Here we provide a first step toward the development of a glacial‐sensitive model of island biogeography, representing the tentative temporal evolution of those biogeographical parameters during the last glacial cycle. From this reasoning we attempt to derive predictions regarding the imprint of sea level cycles on genetic, demographic or biogeographical patterns within remote island biotas.

Abstract Floods are challenging the resilience of societies all over the world. In many countries there are discussions on diversifying the strategies for flood risk management, which implies some sort of policy change. To understand the possibilities of such change, a thorough understanding of the forces of stability and change of underlying governance arrangements is required. It follows from the path dependency literature that countries which rely strongly on flood infrastructures, as part of flood defense strategies, would be more path dependent. Consequently there is a higher chance to find more incremental change in these countries than in countries that have a more diversified set of strategies. However, comparative and detailed empirical studies that may help scrutinize this assumption are lacking. To address this knowledge gap, this paper investigates how six European countries (Belgium, England, France, The Netherlands, Poland and Sweden) essentially differ with regard to their governance of flood risks. To analyze stability and change, we focus on how countries are responding to certain societal and ecological driving forces (ecological turn; climate change discourses; European policies; and the increasing prevalence of economic rationalizations) that potentially affect the institutional arrangements for flood risk governance. Taking both the variety of flood risk governance in countries and their responses to driving forces into account, we can clarify the conditions of stability or change of flood risk governance arrangements more generally. The analysis shows that the national-level impact of driving forces is strongly influenced by the flood risk governance arrangements in the six countries. Path dependencies are indeed visible in countries with high investments in flood infrastructure accompanied by strongly institutionalized governance arrangements (Poland, the Netherlands) but not only there. Also more diversified countries that are less dependent on flood infrastructure and flood defense only (England) show path dependencies and mostly incremental change. More substantial changes are visible in countries that show moderate diversification of strategies (Belgium, France) or countries that ‘have no strong path yet’ in comprehensive flood risk governance (Sweden). This suggests that policy change can be expected when there is both the internal need and will to change and a barrage of (external) driving forces pushing for change.