Since 2015, the international policy community has started to agree on international agreements with ambitious middle-term and long-term goals, highly relevant to sustainable consumption and production (SCP) such as those seen in the Paris Agreement, SDGs, and the plastic-related agreements at the G7 and G20 processes. Along with this trend, there...
The lack of strategic planning in stormwater management has made rapidly urbanizing
cities more vulnerable to urban water issues than in the past. Low infiltration rates, increase in
peak river discharge, and recurrence of urban floods and waterlogging are clear signs of unplanned
rapid urbanization. As with many other low to middle-income...
Ensuring sustainable consumption and production (SCP) patterns is an important task for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 12 by 2030. To facilitate international and domestic collaboration toward regional SCP, we developed a collaborative workshop method to generate and structure ideas about consumption and production (CP) patterns and...
Despite expanding interest in nature's contributions to people (NCP) studies, understanding of sacred natural sites’ contributions to human society and the restoration of fragmented landscapes remains relatively limited. This study examines the diversity and extent of NCP by church forests in a fragmented tropical landscape in southern Ethiopia. We...
One third of the world’s population reside in water-stressed areas, and as the socio-economic impacts of climate change intensify, coastal ecosystems are particularly vulnerable. Over the last few decades, researchers and policymakers have been looking at the existing water demand–resource relationship to predict future trends and prioritize better...
The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is the third coronavirus this century to threaten human health, killing more than two million people globally. Like previous coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2 is suspected to have wildlife origins and was possibly transmitted to humans via wet markets selling bushmeat (aka harvested wild meat). Thus, an interdisciplinary...
The increased frequency of extreme rain events due to climate change has garnered attention in Japan. In 2018, the country enacted the Act of Climate Change Adaptation to formulate plans at national and local levels. The government has suggested the use of nature-based solutions (NBSs) across the country to address the increased risk of natural...
Widespread urban expansion around the world, combined with rapid demographic and
climatic changes, has resulted in serious pollution issues in many coastal water bodies. To help
formulate coastal management strategies to mitigate the impacts of these extreme changes (e.g.,
local land-use or climate change adaptation policies), research...
Water scarcity, together with the projected impacts of water stress worldwide, has led
to a rapid increase in research on measuring water security. However, water security has been
conceptualized under different perspectives, including various aspects and dimensions. Since public
health is also an integral part of water security, it is necessary...
Biodiversity knowledge is communicated by scientists to policymakers at the biodiversity “science-policy interface” (SPI). Although the biodiversity SPI is the subject of a growing body of literature, gaps in our understanding include the efficacy of mechanisms to bridge the interface, the quality of information exchanged between science and policy...