Mapping the automation of Twitter communications on climate change, sustainability, and environmental crises — a review of current research.

Online social media such as the microblog Twitter are key digital arenas shaping the public discourse on important societal topics. Automated social media accounts, so-called ‘social bots,’ have emerged as a controversial phenomenon, proven to both disrupt and support online communications on topics such as political elections and public health. To what extent social bots also impact online conversations on climate change, environmental crises, and…

Conceptualizing a Sustainable Food System in an Automated World: Toward a “Eudaimonian” Future

The industrialized world has entered a new era of widespread automation, and although this may create long-term gains in economic productivity and wealth accumulation, many professions are expected to disappear during the ensuing shift, leading to potentially significant disruptions in labor markets and associated socioeconomic difficulties. Food production, like many other industrial sectors, has also undergone a century of mechanization, having moved toward increasingly large-scale…

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,…

Sustainability, autonomy, and benefits from forest commons

The Social Costs of Marine Litter along the East China Sea: Evidence from Ten Coastal Scenic Spots of Zhejiang Province, China

Marine litter poses numerous threats to the global environment. To estimate the social costs of marine litter in China, two stated preference methods, namely the contingent valuation model (CVM) and the choice experiment model (CEM), were used in this research. This paper conducted surveys at ten different beaches along the East China Sea in Zhejiang province in October 2017. The results indicate that approximately 74.1%…

Implementing Environmental Policies in Central and Eastern Europe

Social Sciences in an Era of Rapid Global Change

Global collaboration between scientists has become increasingly important as the world seems to become increasingly polarized, and planetary change accelerates. Strong global research networks and professional associations are key to help society make sense of our changing world and possible futures. What insights do decades of research within the international research community in the Earth System Governance Project offer us about navigating between science, science advice, and policy?  This seminar…

Principles to avoid policy paralysis

Global environmental change challenges are to their nature complex, and complexity seems to be somewhat of a buzzword in contemporary sustainability science. But too much focus on complex interactions can create a hurdle for appropriate policy decisions and even cause an uncertainty paralysis, signified by a failure to act even in the face of looming threats. Fret not, however, in a new article in the…

Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits

The food system is a major driver of climate change, changes in land use, depletion of freshwater resources, and pollution of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems through excessive nitrogen and phosphorus inputs. Here we show that between 2010 and 2050, as a result of expected changes in population and income levels, the environmental effects of the food system could increase by 60–90% in the absence of…

Styrmedel för hållbar matkonsumtion – en kunskapsöversikt och vägar framåt

Den här rapporten är resultatet av ett samarbetsprojekt mellan Mistra Sustainable Consumption, SLU Future Food, Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Centre for Collective Action Research (CeCAR) vid Göteborgs universitet samt Chalmers. Projektet syftade till att översiktligt kartlägga nuvarande kunskapsläge om styrmedel för en miljömässigt hållbar matkonsumtion samt att identifiera vad offentliga aktörer redan idag skulle kunna göra för att främja en positiv utveckling. Den riktar…