What if solar energy becomes really cheap? A thought experiment on environmental problem shifting

Solving one environmental problem may often invoke or intensify another one. Such environmental problem shifting (EPS) is a neglected topic in global sustainability research. Indeed, it is difficult to study as it requires the merging of insights from various research areas. Here we identify relevant studies, and provide an illustration and guidelines for the systematic study of EPS. As a modest thought experiment to illustrate…

Aquaculture and Sustainable Seafood

Seafood brings benefits to both human health and the environment and can have an increasingly important role to play for a sustainable food future. Large variability of how different  “blue foods” contribute and relate to environmental performance, nutritional qualities and food security pose challenges for policies aiming to steer the food system towards sustainability. However, this diversity also offers possibilities. Seafood is important One of…

Sustainability of deep-sea fish species under the European Union Common Fisheries Policy

The historical expansion of fishing industries into the deep sea has been described at the global level, but corresponding patterns are less well known at other geographical scales. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) has stated that most deep-sea species exploited by European fishing industries are harvested outside safe biological limits. As a result, the European Union commenced regulating exploitation of…

Global aquaculture more sustainable in the last 20 years

A new study in Nature shows that the diverse aquaculture industry has made significant strides toward sustainability but also highlights necessary measures for improvement. The findings can help shape how consumers think about the seafood they buy, and inform governance strategies critical to global food and nutrition security. Twenty years ago, an analysis led by Stanford University, sparked controversy by highlighting fish farming’s damage to…

Governance, Technology
and Complexity

The speed and scope of climate, environmental, technological and socio-economic change pose serious challenges to the problem-solving capacities of norms, institutions and legal systems world-wide. This is exacerbated by the fact that, due to globalisation and technological change, the world can be viewed as increasingly shaped by the behaviour of complex systems: emergence, connectivity, surprise, non-linear changes and poorly understood interactions across regions and sectors…

The Common Fisheries Policy: An enforcement problem

Marine populations in Europe are in decline due to the unsuccessful results of the Common Fisheries Policy. By combining data of scientific recommendations from ICES, TACs approved and reported landings with an age-structured model, the objectives of this paper are to investigate the level of compliance of the TAC regulation, and the level of enforcement and its economic impact on fishery resources. The results presented…

Automated framing of climate change? The role of social bots in the Twitter climate change discourse during the 2019/2020 Australia bushfires

Extreme weather-related events like wildfires have been increasing in frequency and severity due to climate change. Public online conversations that reflect on these events as climate emergencies can create awareness and build support for climate action but are also used to spread misinformation and climate change denial. To what extent automated social media accounts—“social bots”—amplify different perspectives of such events and influence climate change discourses,…

Course: AI for the Planet

A free online course on how to apply AI-methods (“deep learning”) to analyze satellite images related to land use change and deforestation will bw held 2 October 2020. Our living planet and the climate system are changing rapidly. Studying these changes have become increasingly possible thanks to developments in advanced satellite imaginary. Growing volumes of image data, however, also pose difficult challenges to scientists. As…

Nobel Prize Summit: Truth, Trust and Hope

An international summit 24-26 May will bring together Nobel laureates and other experts to explore the problem of misinformation and measures that organizations, policymakers, and citizens can take to combat misinformation, restore trust in science and create a hopeful future. The hybrid summit will take place online and in Washington D.C. Misinformation is eroding peoples trust in science and runs the risk of becoming one…

See video Emotions affect how we make sense of the world, communicate with each other, and collaborate. Emotions influence the way information is shared online, how communities perceive and respond to environmental crises, and how elites, civil society and citizens engage in the climate crisis. The importance of emotions on our lives is certainly not a new observation. However, human emotions are being increasingly mediated…