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Comprehensive and reliable information on anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gas emissions is required to track progress towards keeping warming well below 2°C as agreed upon in the Paris Agreement. Here we provide a dataset on anthropogenic GHG emissions 1970-2019 with a broad country and sector coverage. We build the dataset from recent releases from the “Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research” (EDGAR) for CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industry (FFI), CH4 emissions, N2O emissions, and fluorinated gases and use a well-established fast-track method to extend this dataset from 2018 to 2019. We complement this with information on net CO2 emissions from land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) from three available bookkeeping models.

Variation in food resources can result in dramatic fluctuations in the body condition of animals dependent on those resources. Decreases in body mass can disrupt patterns of energy allocation and impose stress, thereby altering immune function. In this study we investigated links between changes in body mass of captive cane toads (Rhinella marina), their circulating white blood cell populations, and their performance in immune assays. Captive toads that lost weight over a 3-month period had increased levels of monocytes and heterophils and reduced levels of eosinophils. Basophil and lymphocyte levels were unrelated to changes in mass. Because individuals that lost mass had higher heterophil levels but stable lymphocyte levels, the ratio of these cell types was also higher, partially consistent with a stress response. Phagocytic ability of whole blood was higher in toads that lost mass, due to increased circulating levels of phagocytic cells. Other measures of immune performance were unrelated to mass change. These results highlight the challenges faced by invasive species as they expand their range into novel environments which may impose substantial seasonal changes in food availability that were not present in the native range. Individuals facing energy restrictions may shift their immune function towards more economical and general avenues of combating pathogens.

The expansion of irrigated agriculture has increased global crop production but resulted in widespread stress to freshwater resources. Ensuring that increases in irrigated production only occur in places where water is relatively abundant is a key objective of sustainable agriculture, and knowledge of how irrigated land has evolved is important for measuring progress towards water sustainability. Yet a spatially detailed understanding of the evolution of global area equipped for irrigation (AEI) is missing. Here we utilize the latest sub-national irrigation statistics (covering 17298 administrative units) from various official sources to develop a gridded (5 arc-min resolution) global product of AEI for the years 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015. We find that AEI increased by 11% from 2000 (297 Mha) to 2015 (330 Mha) with locations of both substantial expansion (e.g., northwest India, northeast China) and decline (e.g., Russia). Combining these outputs with information on green (i.e., rainfall) and blue (i.e., surface and ground) water stress, we also examine to what extent irrigation has expanded unsustainably (i.e., in places already experiencing water stress). We find that more than half (52%) of irrigation expansion has taken place in regions that were already water stressed, with India alone accounting for 36% of global unsustainable expansion. These findings provide new insights into the evolving patterns of global irrigation with important implications for global water sustainability and food security. Recommended citation: Mehta, P., Siebert, S., Kummu, M. et al. Half of twenty-first century global irrigation expansion has been in water-stressed regions. Nat Water (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-024-00206-9 Open-access peer reviewed publication available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-024-00206-9 Files G_AEI_*.ASC were produced using the GMIA dataset[https://data.apps.fao.org/catalog/iso/f79213a0-88fd-11da-a88f-000d939bc5d8]. Files MEIER_G_AEI_*.ASC were produced using Meier et al. (2018) dataset [https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.884744].

Dynamics of societal material stocks such as buildings and infrastructures and their spatial patterns drive surging resource use and emissions. Building up and maintaining stocks requires large amounts of resources; currently stock-building materials amount to almost 60% of all materials used by humanity. Buildings, infrastructures and machinery shape social practices of production and consumption, thereby creating path dependencies for future resource use. They constitute the physical basis of the spatial organization of most socio-economic activities, for example as mobility networks, urbanization and settlement patterns and various other infrastructures. This dataset features a detailed map of material stocks for the whole of Germany on a 10m grid based on high resolution Earth Observation data (Sentinel-1 + Sentinel-2), crowd-sourced geodata (OSM) and material intensity factors. Temporal extent The map is representative for ca. 2018. Data format Per federal state, the data come in tiles of 30x30km (see shapefile). The projection is EPSG:3035. The images are compressed GeoTiff files (*.tif). There is a mosaic in GDAL Virtual format (*.vrt), which can readily be opened in most Geographic Information Systems. The dataset features area and mass for different street types area and mass for different rail types area and mass for other infrastructure area, volume and mass for different building types Masses are reported as total values, and per material category. Units area in m² height in m volume in m³ mass in t for infrastructure and buildings Further information For further information, please see the publication or contact Helmut Haberl (helmut.haberl@boku.ac.at). A web-visualization of this dataset is available here. Visit our website to learn more about our project MAT_STOCKS - Understanding the Role of Material Stock Patterns for the Transformation to a Sustainable Society. Publication Haberl, H., Wiedenhofer, D., Schug, F., Frantz, D., Virág, D., Plutzar, C., Gruhler, K., Lederer, J., Schiller, G. , Fishman, T., Lanau, M., Gattringer, A., Kemper, T., Liu, G., Tanikawa, H., van der Linden, S., Hostert, P. (accepted): High-resolution maps of material stocks in buildings and infrastructures in Austria and Germany. Environmental Science & Technology Funding This research was primarly funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (MAT_STOCKS, grant agreement No 741950). ML and GL acknowledge funding by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (CityWeight, 6111-00555B), ML thanks the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC; project Multi-Scale, Circular Economic Potential of Non-Residential Building Scale, EP/S029273/1), JL acknowledges funding by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF), project ESR17-067, TF acknowledges the Israel Science Foundation grant no. 2706/19.

Climate change is worsening the number, frequency and duration of natural hazards across the globe, making disaster risk reduction and resilience building among the most pressing challenges ahead. According to UN-Habitat, informal settlements are where the impacts of climate change are the most acute in urban areas and strengthening resilience in these neighbourhoods represents a very complex yet urgent challenge. Today, urban areas are home to 56 per cent of the world’s population and this figure is projected to increase to 60 per cent by 2030 and 68 per cent by 2050, with 90 per cent of the growth by 2050 expected to occur in less developed economies. In these countries, population growth and displacement (including climate-driven migrations) will lead to rapid and unplanned urbanisation forcing a growing number of people into informal settlements. Currently, one billion people live in informal settlements, mostly in Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and this figure is expected to grow to 3 billion in 2050. Horizon 2020 MSCA-RISE, Grant Agreement #873119

An important outcome of a university business education is to shape individuals who are capable of working in and operating businesses that deliver economically profitable, socially responsible and ecologically viable services. In preparing future sustainable tourism workers, universities also need to design curricula that develop students’ skills in critical thinking and acting with a sense of ethics and empathy. Research evidence indicates, however, that students often graduate without these skills. A potential reason for this is the design of tourism curricula based on weaker conceptualisations of sustainability (e.g. triple bottom line) as opposed to stronger conceptualisations of sustainability (more holistic and inclusive approaches). Another possible reason could be that educators are not successfully cultivating students’ abilities to think in more complex ways about sustainability nor are they adequately acknowledging the ways in which their students make sense of a complex concept such as sustainability. To add to the complexity of the sustainability phenomenon, there is growing international pressure on the tourism industry by the United Nations (UN) to work towards achieving the 17 global sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030. Despite recognition that tourism can help contribute towards the SDGs, a UN report provides evidence that tourism policymakers are not actively and sufficiently engaging with the SDGs. The UN’s recognition of the tourism industry’s ability to advance the SDGS through economic growth (SDG 8) is further problematic, even if this is seen as sustainable economic growth. The term ‘sustainable development’ has long been contested as a weaker form of sustainability due to its progrowth and development emphasis. Given the current global overtourism crisis, it seems more important than ever that universities pay attention to how sustainable tourism is being interpreted and implemented. This is necessary if educators are to truly encourage stronger sustainability mindsets in future tourism workers and change makers. Therefore, the overarching aim of this thesis is to explore how conceptualisations of strong sustainability amongst university students can be strengthened. This study is the first to explore the usefulness of variation theory in strengthening conceptualisations of strong sustainability amongst university tourism students. It provides the tourism literature with evidence of: 1) the conceptualisation of sustainability currently being integrated into undergraduate tourism courses by universities internationally; 2) the benefits of phenomenography as a research approach for studying qualitative difference in understanding concepts such as sustainability and sustainable tourism; 3) the viability of using a learning study approach to develop ‘stronger’ understandings of sustainability; and 4) the potential of variation theory to explain how individuals acquire understandings of sustainability. The empirical research is presented in three studies to address three main research objectives. The first research objective was ‘to identify the conceptualisations of sustainability currently being used in university undergraduate sustainable tourism courses internationally’. The first study, in Chapter III, identifies whether ‘strong sustainability’, sustainability skills and the SDGs are currently underpinning 60 international sustainable tourism courses. Chapter IV ‘explores the different ways in which tourism students, academics and industry practitioners currently conceptualise sustainability’ by conducting phenomenographic interviews with 20 participants. A continuum of less to more complex understandings of sustainability was then developed to identify qualitatively different ways of understanding sustainability. The third research objective was ‘to investigate alternate teaching and learning approaches that might encourage stronger conceptualisations of sustainability amongst undergraduate tourism students’. Chapter V, discusses how the continuum explored in Chapter IV was used in an Australian university sustainable tourism course, underpinned by variation theory, to implement a learning study to enhance students’ understandings of sustainability and the conceptual complexity of the term sustainability. The findings revealed that internationally, sustainable tourism courses do not include ‘very strong’ conceptualisations of sustainability, and that sustainability pedagogies (such as systems and holistic thinking) are not widely used. Phenomenographic interviews with (predominantly Australian-based) lecturers, students and industry workers initially revealed four qualitatively different ways of understanding sustainability ranging from weak to very strong understandings of sustainability. Whilst many tourism lecturers seemed to show understandings of moderate to strong sustainability, very few showed very strong sustainability conceptualisations. This implies that some tourism courses may potentially be designed and underpinned by a weak to moderate articulation of sustainability. These interviews also revealed that industry owners tended to demonstrate a much stronger sustainability understanding than tourism lecturers. Most industry owners had a longer-term focus and key motives centred on giving back to society and a ‘pay-it-forward’ attitude towards the environment. Further findings in the learning study revealed that variation theory offers a valuable teaching and learning strategy to help develop more complex conceptualisations of ‘very strong’ sustainability within a university tourism course. Based on these findings, a number of implications for theory and practice are examined. These include recommendations regarding the design of sustainable tourism courses such as strengthening the sustainability conceptualisations underpinning them; better integration of the SDGs; and the development of critical and systems thinking skills. The three studies also provide examples for use in practice. For example, in Chapter III, a questioning strategy is provided. The phenomenographic continuum in Chapter IV provides a teaching and learning tool for educators to incorporate into sustainability courses to help students’ understandings of the phenomena. Chapter V provides insight into how this continuum can be incorporated into a learning study and provides practical ways of using variation theory. By implementing the continuum into teaching and learning activities, both educators and industry can develop deeper and stronger conceptualisations of sustainability for the tourism industry. Limitations of the study are discussed, and recommendations put forward for future research. In addition, ways in which educational institutions and governments can use the findings of the study to enhance teaching and learning, both in the classroom and industry workplaces, are discussed. Such enhancements will provide a foundation of ‘strong sustainability’ mindsets within our future tourism industry, which in turn will contribute to the 2030 SDGs being achieved.

The energy performance certificate (EPC) is an information and market tool for climate protection which shall foster the market for energy efficient living space. It allows potential renters and buyers to compare the energy performance of buildings and provides recommendations on how the energy efficiency of the building can be improved. However, there are potentials for improvement in terms of the user-friendliness of the certificate and the consideration of occupant behaviour in the modeling of building energy use. Hence, the end-users of EPCs such as buildings owners, tenants, building occupants and building managers play a crucial role regarding the redesign of EPCs because learning about their needs can contribute to improve the certificate and exploring their everyday energy behaviour allows to make more accurate assumptions in the modelling of building energy. This report is a synthesis of the findings from the four user-related tasks in the ePANACEA project which are the stakeholder analysis, the user-needs analysis, the acceptance testing (first and final acceptance test) and the exploration of occupants’ energy behaviour. Each research step is briefly recapped (objectives, methods and highlights of the results). Furthermore, the report shows how the research steps (except for the final acceptance test) have influenced the development of new EPC summary pages during the project life time (final version in October 2022). The final chapter provides the recommendations on the next generation of EPC (with a focus on the content and presentation of content in the certificate) that stem from the user-related tasks, including the outcomes from the final acceptance test.

{"references": ["BIM4EEB, 2020a. Digital Construction Ontologies. Available online: https://w3id.org/digitalconstruction (Accessed on 20 December 2021).", "BIM4EEB, 2020b. BIM Management System. Available online: https://bim4eeb.oneteam.it (Accessed on 21 December 2021).", "BIM4EEB, 2021. BIM4EEB: BIM based toolkit for Efficient rEnovation in Buildings. Available online: https://www.bim4eeb-project.eu/ (Accessed on 21 December 2021).", "Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE), 2020. The European Renovation wave: from words to action.", "Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE), 2021. The renovation wave strategy & action plan: designed for success or doomed to fail?", "Daniotti, B., et al., 2021. An Interoperable BIM-Based Toolkit for Efficient Renovation in Buildings. Buildings, 11(7), 271.", "Digital Europe, 2021. A digital investment plan for Europe.", "Elagiry, M., et al., 2020. Digitalization Tools for Energy-Efficient Renovations, Sustainable Places 2020, Online 28\u201330 October 2020. MDPI.", "European Commission, 2020a. Energy efficiency in buildings", "European Commission, 2020b. A renovation wave for Europe - greening our buildings, creating jobs, improving lives.", "European Commission, 2020c. Renovation Wave: doubling the renovation rate to cut emissions, boost recovery and reduce energy poverty.", "T\u00f6rm\u00e4, S., et al., 2020. Towards BIM-Enhanced Renovation Management Tools with Support to Stakeholder Interaction, Sustainable Places 2020, Online 28\u201330 October 2020. MDPI.", "Valra, A., et al., 2020. The BIM Management System: A Common Data Environment Using Linked Data to Support the Efficient Renovation in Buildings, Sustainable Places 2020, Online 28\u201330 October 2020. MDPI."]} The construction sector is among the main ones responsible for energy consumption and greenhouse gases emissions. Hence, buildings retrofitting shall be encouraged and supported by targeted actions to achieve a European climate-neutrality by 2050, as pointed out by EU Agenda objectives. In this context, the European Commission is promoting a Renovation Wave Strategy. One step towards the renovation action is the exploitation of digital tools such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) and the Internet of Things (IoT). This paper is related to the potentialities of an ongoing EU funded project –BIM4EEB- and it illustrates the application of two BIM-based tools, namely BIMPlanner and BIM4Occupants, developed within the project. The two tools have respectively the purpose of sharing current information about the progress of construction works among renovation stakeholders and sharing with inhabitants tailored information about indoor conditions, comfort preferences and energy consumption of their houses. Thanks to IoT devices installed in a demonstration building permitted the real-time evaluation and control of several parameters. Therefore, a pilot building, namely the Italian demonstration application of the project, is described for testing the proposed tools. Benefits connected to the BIM framework and IoT devices result in an improvement of data sharing and communication between renovation stakeholders, then in an enhanced building process.