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Anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are the main cause of global climate change. The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the worst of its kind in the last century with regard to global deaths and, in the absence of any effective treatment, it led to governments worldwide mandating lock-down measures, as well as citizens voluntarily reducing non-essential trips and activities. In this study, the influence of decreased activity on CO2 emissions and on the economy was assessed. The US, EU-28, China and India, representing almost 60% of anthropogenic carbon emissions, were considered as reference entities and the trends were extrapolated to estimate the global impact. This study aimed to deduce initial estimates of anthropogenic CO2 emissions based on the available economic and industrial outputs and activity data, as they could not be directly measured. Sector-wise variations in emissions were modeled by assuming proportionality of the outputs/activities and the resulting emissions. A decline in road traffic was seen up to March 2020 and then a steady growth was observed, with the exception of China where road traffic started to recover by the end of January. The vast majority of passenger flights were grounded and, therefore, global air traffic plummeted by 43.7% from January to May 2020. A considerable drop in coal power production and the annual industrial growth rate was also observed. The overall economic decline led to a drop of 4.9% in annual global gross domestic product (GDP) for Q2 2020. The total global CO2 emissions reduction for January through April 2020 compared to the year before was estimated to be 1749 Mt. CO2 (14.3%) with a maximum contribution from the transportation sector (58.3% among total emissions by sector). Like other previous crises, if the economy rebounds as expected the reductions will be temporary. Long-term impacts can be minimized considering the business as well as lifestyle changes for travel, utilizing virtual structures created during this crisis, and switching to sustainable transportation.

Despite their increasing frequency and magnitude, research on how polycrises influence policymaking has been remarkably scarce. In this article, we approach this issue from an evidence-based policy learning perspective. We explore how the polycrisis involving the progressive intersections between the climate change crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the energy crisis influenced evidence-based policy learning underlying the European Union’s climate policymaking. Our findings show that at the initial phases of the polycrisis, interdisciplinary scientific evidence was employed to depoliticize the climate change crisis and facilitate a paradigmatic policy shift. Yet, as relatively faster burning crises overlapped, such evidence played an increasingly substantiating role for previously established institutional choices, and then its role further diminished as more crises overlapped. These findings offer a more robust theoretical understanding of evidence-based policy learning and its contribution to policy change within polycrises. This also draws practitioners’ attention to the need for actively re-aligning evidence-based policy learning practices as political conditions evolve during polycrises.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an immense and unforeseen increase in demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers worldwide. Amongst other products, respirator masks are crucial to protect the users against transmission of the virus. Decontamination and reuse of the existing stock could be a solution to the shortage of new respirators. Based upon existing studies, it was found that (I) a solid quality control method is essential to test product reuse, (II) in-depth evaluation of the different parts of the filtering facepiece respirator (FFR) should be considered, and (III) communication of the reuse cycle is essential to take track of the amount of reuse, as this is limited to ensure quality. The goal of this paper is two-fold. First, we identify the impact of decontamination on the different parts of the FFRs and how the quality control should be performed. Two different types of FFRs are analysed within this paper, resulting in the recommendation of combining quantitative respirator mask fit testing with a thorough sensory evaluation of decontaminated FFRs to qualify them for reuse. Secondly, the possibilities of communication of this reuse to the eventual user are mapped through in-depth reasoning.

The global fashion industry poses a significant threat to sustainability, occasioning the emergence of sustainable fashion concepts such as slow fashion. However, sustainability as a principle is mostly established in corporate communication and reporting and sustainable fashion is mostly debated from a marketing and consumer perspective. The study at hand fills the existing gap in research on how slow fashion is portrayed on social media, focusing particularly on slow fashion, Instagram, and an Australian context. An explorative content analysis was conducted following the hashtag #slowfashionaustralia; open-coding methods were employed to enable three thematic frames to emerge from the data; namely, slow fashion as Business 2.0: An eco-marketplace, as an authentic experience of self-expression, and as a community value. Further analysis of the identified themes yielded the framing process of slow fashion on Instagram, mainly representing empowerment for women. Methodological limitations are outlined, as well as new research potential in the area of sustainability communication.

As the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a sudden and abrupt change in global energy landscape. Traditional fossil fuels that serve as the linchpin of the modern civilization have found their consumption rapidly fell across the most categories due to strict lockdown and stringent measures that have been adopted to suppress the disease. These changes consequently steered various environmental benefits across the world in recent time. The present article is an attempt to investigate these environmental benefits and reversals that have been materialized in this unfolding situation due to reduced consumption of fossil fuels. Life cycle assessment tool has been used hereby to evaluate nine environmental impacts and one energy based impact. These impacts include: ozone formation (terrestrial ecosystems), terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication, terrestrial ecotoxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity, marine ecotoxicity, land use, mineral resources scarcity and cumulative exergy demand. Outcomes from the study demonstrate that COVID-19 has delivered impressive changes in global environment and life cycle exergy demand with about 11-25% curtailment in all above-mentioned impacts in 2020 in comparison to their corresponding readings in 2019.

Reflecting on the many debates over the years on changing urbanization processes, on the towns and cities of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the main challenge will be listening to lessons of wisdom from the past and adapting these to our future professional work. When Chief Seattle said that the Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth, he called for more humility and respect so as to plan for the needs of today and tomorrow, and not for the greed of a few. The doomsday scenarios of overpopulation only make sense if we continue to exploit our planet the way we do today, as if we have an infinite reservoir of resources. Already back in the 1960s, Barbara Ward, John F. C. Turner, and particularly Kenneth Boulding taught me to rethink our whole perception of Spaceship Earth. I have seen many towns and cities grow as if resources were limitless; I myself have seen and worked on efforts to focus on spatial quality, respecting nature whenever possible for a growing number of people, recognizing resources as being precious and scarce, and yet guaranteeing equitable access to a good quality of urban life. Such objectives are not evident, when models in education, schools of thought, professional planners, and greedy developers are often geared towards the contrary: the higher the skyscrapers, the better; the more egotripping by architects, the more the rich like it; the more people are stimulated to consume, the better the world will be. Such narrow visions will no longer help. At several global urban planning and developments events (1976, 1992, 1996, 2016, etc.), new ideas and agendas have been put forward. Whether the present Covid-19 crisis may induce a more rapid change in vision and practice is still too early to confirm, but luckily, several towns and cities, and a few visionary planners and decision makers are showing some promising examples.

Nyoongar people have lived in the South West of Western Australia for at least 50,000 years. During that time, they experienced significant climate change, including wide variations in temperature and rainfall, and hundreds of metres’ difference in sea levels. Nyoongar people have a long memory, and climate change is described in their stories and in the knowledge they hold about how life was lived in earlier times. There are artifacts and places that have been manipulated to be productive despite severe drought. COVID-19 disrupted the writing of this article, and the authors felt it appropriate to include Nyoongar responses to the threat of epidemic disease brought by Europeans early in their settlement of the area. This review collates existing material generated through Koodjal Jinnung (two-way seeing), a research method that incorporates traditional knowledge and contemporary social and natural sciences about Nyoongar history, to create a description of the resiliency of Nyoongar people under threat from climate change. The article identifies key values and resilience factors underpinning the successful implementation of behavioural and technological mechanisms to negotiate severe climate change and the threat of epidemic disease.