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Griggs et al. (2013) redefine sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present while safeguarding Earth’s life-support system, on which the welfare of current and future generations depend.” We recommend this as the end goal that the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) should strive to achieve. Integration across the SDGs is less than what is required from a science perspective. Effective implementation of the SDGs will require States to attend to trade-offs and overlaps. We argue that continuous failure to address integration within the SDGs will jeopardize realization of this ultimate end goal. Therefore, we adopt a systems approach to identify gaps and connections across the goals and targets of the SDGs as well as leverage points for effective intervention. We triangulate across methods of critical analysis, conceptual modeling, and keyword network analysis to draw out seven “overarching directions” that could provide a prioritization framework to enhance efficient implementation of the SDGs. Our results identify main gaps as exclusion of key actors (e.g., corporations) and issues (e.g., intergenerational equity and population); inadequate reconciliation of economic growth with maintaining the Earth system; and deficient consideration of the relationship with international law. Conceptual mapping identifies education and innovation; governance and implementation; sustainable consumption and production; and addressing the key drivers of climate change as key leverage points. The keyword analysis highlights greater integration within the SDGs than what appears at face value. Keywords “access,” “women,” “resources,” and “finance” feature across the SDGs and provide further leverage points. Targeting these issues will facilitate realization of a high proportion of SDGs and correspondingly could have a disproportional impact on effective SDG implementation. We conclude that the success of the SDGs needs to be evaluated by the extent to which it contributes to human development while advancing protection of “planetary must-haves” for current and future generations.

The Anthropocene biosphere constitutes an unprecedented phase in the evolution of life on Earth with one species, humans, exerting extensive control. The increasing intensity of anthropogenic forces in the twenty-first century has widespread implications for attempts to govern both human-dominated ecosystems and the last remaining wild ecosystems. Here, we review how evolutionary biology can inform governance and policies in the Anthropocene, focusing on five governance challenges that span biodiversity, environmental management, food and other biomass production, and human health. The five challenges are: ( a ) evolutionary feedbacks, ( b ) maintaining resilience, ( c ) alleviating constraints, ( d ) coevolutionary disruption, and ( e ) biotechnology. Strategies for governing these dynamics will themselves have to be coevolutionary, as eco-evolutionary and social dynamics change in response to each other.

Non-Technical SummarySeveral transnational corporations, investors, international organizations, and philanthropies have formed coalitions to respond to global social and environmental challenges. Do these coalitions, consisting of large-scale actors, have the capacity to contribute to the sustainability transformations that are needed, or do they perpetuate the same systemic dynamics that created the problems in the first place? We investigate this question by comparing publicly available information from five coalitions working on financial and food systems sustainability.Technical SummaryThis paper examines whether large-scale actor coalitions (LSACs) may contribute to transformations toward equitable and sustainable futures. We use a ‘rapid assessment’ 20-variable framework to collect and analyze empirical data from five food and finance coalitions to identify their roles and capacities for transformative change. Our results indicate that LSACs implement distinct strategies to reach their goals. More specifically, due to their diverse set-ups, LSACs have the ability to raise awareness of sustainability issues, utilize ties to push forward agendas, engage in institutional policy-shaping processes, experiment with solutions, and showcase promising niche initiatives. We identify ways that LSACs’ actions can enable efforts of other change-makers who aim to change the food and finance systems and contribute to systems with high and diverse capacities for transformative change. We also discuss why the roles and lack of certain capacities of LSACs might hinder the creation of enabling conditions for transformative change within the food and finance sectors.Social Media SummaryCoalitions consisting of powerful actors have a range of transformative capacities that, under certain conditions, can support systemic transformations within their sectors.

The morphology, physiology, and behavior of marine organisms have been a valuable source of inspiration for solving conceptual and design problems. Here, we introduce this rich and rapidly expanding field of marine biomimetics, and identify it as a poorly articulated and often overlooked element of the ocean economy associated with substantial monetary benefits. We showcase innovations across seven broad categories of marine biomimetic design (adhesion, antifouling, armor, buoyancy, movement, sensory, stealth), and use this framing as context for a closer consideration of the increasingly frequent focus on deep-sea life as an inspiration for biomimetic design. We contend that marine biomimetics is not only a “forgotten” sector of the ocean economy, but has the potential to drive appreciation of nonmonetary values, conservation, and stewardship, making it well-aligned with notions of a sustainable blue economy. We note, however, that the highest ambitions for a blue economy are that it not only drives sustainability, but also greater equity and inclusivity, and conclude by articulating challenges and considerations for bringing marine biomimetics onto this trajectory.

BackgroundSustainable development goals (SDGs) may play a pivotal role in mitigating antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This study examines how countries can integrate AMR mitigation with sustainable development strategies, providing evidence on the prioritisation of AMR-related efforts within both agendas.MethodsWe conducted a comparative analysis of the international global action plan (GAP) and national action plan (NAP) on AMR and SDGs across 10 countries in Africa and Asia. We employed content analysis to map actions to AMR drivers, descriptive statistics to summarise the coverage and focus of the actions and inferential statistics to explore factors associated with the level of policy alignment.ResultsOur findings highlight gaps in the current AMR policy landscape, where drivers are at risk of being redundantly addressed, narrowly focused or entirely overlooked. At the international level, over 50% of AMR drivers are addressed by both frameworks, but national-level overlap is lower (10.5%–47.4%), with Asian countries showing stronger alignment than African countries. Asian countries show a higher proportion of shared drivers than African countries. A considerable proportion of drivers are addressed solely by AMR-NAPs (23.7%–60.5%) or SDG-NAPs (13.2%–31.6%), raising concerns that actions may benefit either sustainable development or AMR at the expense of the other. Finally, 10.5%–26.3% of drivers, mostly distal, are not acknowledged by either framework, highlighting potential policy blind spots.ConclusionsThe Agenda 2030 includes ambitious and cross-cutting goals with GAP-AMR, therefore it can facilitate intersectoral collaboration in addressing AMR. The effective implementation of both agendas will depend on national governments’ capacity to ensure that efforts in combating AMR also contribute to sustainable development.

Background Global biodiversity is rapidly declining, yet we still do not fully understand the relationships between biodiversity and human health and well-being. As debated, the loss of biodiversity or reduced contact with natural biodiversity may lead to more public health problems, such as an increase in chronic disease. There is a growing body of research that investigates how multiple forms of biodiversity are associated with an increasingly diverse set of human health and well-being outcomes across scales. This protocol describes the intended method to systematically mapping the evidence on the associations between biodiversity from microscopic to planetary scales and human health and well-being from individual to global scales. Methods We will systematically map secondary studies on the topic by following the Collaborations for Environmental Evidence Guidelines and Standards for Evidence Synthesis in Environment Management. We developed the searching strings to target both well established and rarely studied forms of biodiversity and human health and well-being outcomes in the literature. A pairwise combination search of biodiversity and human health subtopics will be conducted in PubMed, Web of Science platform (across four databases) and Scopus with no time restrictions. To improve the screening efficiency in EPPI reviewer, supervised machine learning, such as a bespoke classification model, will be trained and applied at title and abstract screening stage. A consistency check between at least two independent reviewers will be conducted during screening (both title-abstract and full-text) and data extraction process. No critical appraisal will be undertaken in this map. We may use topic modelling (unsupervised machine learning) to cluster the topics as a basis for further statistical and narrative analysis.

Non-Technical Summary.In response to the concerns of a growing number of crises, we trace the temporal trends, distribution, and co-occurrences of shocks – sudden events with noticeable impacts – on 175 countries from 1970 to 2019. Our analysis shows that shocks have not evolved uniformly over time and space: after becoming more co-occurring between 1970 and 2000, they then showed a regionally dependent shift in patterns. Our results highlight that regional differentiation is not incidental but constitutive of polycrisis dynamics, and that any effort to theorize, anticipate, or navigate polycrisis must account for this spatial heterogeneity.Technical Summary.Polycrisis has emerged as a new property of the Anthropocene. Defined as the convergence of crises across multiple systems, polycrisis calls for a paradigm shift in how crises are perceived and managed. Characterizing polycrisis dynamics is the first step in that direction but is made difficult by the complex and non-linear mechanisms at play. To overcome this challenge, we adopt a social-ecological systems approach to decompose polycrisis dynamics into two interrelated processes: shocks – sudden events with noticeable impacts, and creeping changes – slow processes that have a potential significant impact on society or the biosphere. We then develop and analyse a harmonized database capturing the occurrence of six categories of shocks (climatic, geophysical, ecological, economic, technological, and conflict-related) across 175 countries between 1970 and 2019. Our analysis reveals a significant rise in shock co-occurrences until 2000, particularly at the intersection of conflict, climate, and technological disruptions. After 2000, co-occurrence began plateauing or declining in all regions, yet at different levels. Our findings highlight the importance of a regionalized and typologically nuanced approach to understanding polycrisis. Our work also paves the way to an integration of polycrisis theory and multi-hazard methodologies for developing a more effective and crisis management ecosystem.Social Media Summary.Dynamics of the polycrisis reveal regional differences, with a possible shift in the interaction of shocks from 2000.

1. Insect responses to recent climate change are well documented, but the role of resource specialization in determining species vulnerability remains poorly understood. Uncovering local ecological effects of temperature change with high-quality, standardized data provides an important first opportunity for predictions about responses of resource specialists, and long-term time series are essential in revealing these responses. 2. Here, we investigate temperature-related changes in local insect communities, using a sampling site with more than a quarter-million records from two decades (1992–2009) of full-season, quantitative light trapping of 1543 species of moths and beetles. 3. We investigated annual as well as long-term changes in fauna composition, abundance and phenology in a climate-related context using species temperature affinities and local temperature data. Finally, we explored these local changes in the context of dietary specialization. 4. Across both moths and beetles, temperature affinity of specialists increased through net gain of hot-dwelling species and net loss of cold-dwelling species. The climate-related composition of generalists remained constant over time. We observed an increase in species richness of both groups. Furthermore, we observed divergent phenological responses between cold- and hot-dwelling species, advancing and delaying their relative abundance, respectively. Phenological advances were particularly pronounced in cold-adapted specialists. 5. Our results suggest an important role of resource specialization in explaining the compositional and phenological responses of insect communities to local temperature increases. We propose that resource specialists in particular are affected by local temperature increase, leading to the distinct temperature-mediated turnover seen for this group. We suggest that the observed increase in species number could have been facilitated by dissimilar utilization of an expanded growing season by cold- and hot-adapted species, as indicated by their oppositely directed phenological responses. An especially pronounced advancement of cold-adapted specialists suggests that such phenological advances might help minimize further temperature-induced loss of resource specialists. 6. Although limited to a single study site, our results suggest several local changes in the insect fauna in concordance with expected change of larger-scale temperature increases.