Understanding and communicating the environmental impacts of food products is key to enabling transitions to environmentally sustainable food systems El Bilali and Allahyari, Inf. Process. Agric. 5, ...456-464 (2018). While previous analyses compared the impacts of food commodities such as fruits, wheat, and beef Poore and Nemecek,
360, 987-992 (2018), most food products contain numerous ingredients. However, because the amount of each ingredient in a product is often known only by the manufacturer, it has been difficult to assess their environmental impacts. Here, we develop an approach to overcome this limitation. It uses prior knowledge from ingredient lists to infer the composition of each ingredient, and then pairs this with environmental databases Poore and Nemecek
360, 987-992 (2018); Gephart et al., Nature 597, 360-365 (2021) to derive estimates of a food product's environmental impact across four indicators: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water stress, and eutrophication potential. Using the approach on 57,000 products in the United Kingdom and Ireland shows food types have low (e.g., sugary beverages, fruits, breads), to intermediate (e.g., many desserts, pastries), to high environmental impacts (e.g., meat, fish, cheese). Incorporating NutriScore reveals more nutritious products are often more environmentally sustainable but there are exceptions to this trend, and foods consumers may view as substitutable can have markedly different impacts. Sensitivity analyses indicate the approach is robust to uncertainty in ingredient composition and in most cases sourcing. This approach provides a step toward enabling consumers, retailers, and policy makers to make informed decisions on the environmental impacts of food products.
Reflecting the popularity of nature-based activities such as hiking and mountain biking, there are thousands of kilometres of recreational trails worldwide traversing a range of natural areas. These ...trails have environmental impacts on soils and vegetation, but where has there been research, what impacts have been found and how were they measured? Using a systematic quantitative literature review methodology, we assessed the impacts of trails on vegetation and soils, highlighting what is known, but also key knowledge gaps. Of the 59 original research papers identified on this topic that have been published in English language peer-reviewed academic journals, most were for research conducted in protected areas (71%), with few from developing countries (17%) or threatened ecosystems (14%). The research is concentrated in a few habitats and biodiversity hotspots, mainly temperate woodland, alpine grassland and Mediterranean habitats, often in the USA (32%) or Australia (20%). Most examined formal trails, with just 15% examining informal trails and 11% assessing both types. Nearly all papers report the results of observational surveys (90%), collecting quantitative data (66%) with 24% using geographic information systems. There was an emphasis on assessing trail impacts at a local scale, either on the trail itself and/or over short gradients away from the trail edge. Many assessed changes in composition and to some degree, structure, of vegetation and soils with the most common impacts documented including reduced vegetation cover, changes in plant species composition, trail widening, soil loss and soil compaction. There were 14 papers assessing how these local impacts can accumulate at the landscape scale. Few papers assessed differences in impacts among trails (7 papers), changes in impacts over time (4), species-specific responses (3) and only one assessed effects on plant community functioning. This review provides evidence that there are key research gaps including assessing informal trails, comparing trail types, landscape and temporal scale impacts, functional responses and impacts on threatened ecosystems/species. A more diverse geographic spread of research is also required including in regions experiencing rapid growth in tourism and recreation.
•Research on vegetation and soil impacts of recreational trail infrastructure is limited.•Current research is biased to only a few ecosystems in protected areas in developed nations.•Most responses measured are compositional and are measured at local scales.•There is a need for more landscape-scale, temporal and comparative research on trail impacts.•A greater geographical spread of research is encouraged especially in urban, unprotected or threatened ecosystems.
This paper presents a review of existing multi-risk assessment concepts and tools applied by organisations and projects providing the basis for the development of a multi-risk methodology in a ...climate change perspective.
Relevant initiatives were developed for the assessment of multiple natural hazards (e.g. floods, storm surges, droughts) affecting the same area in a defined timeframe (e.g. year, season, decade). Major research efforts were focused on the identification and aggregation of multiple hazard types (e.g. independent, correlated, cascading hazards) by means of quantitative and semi-quantitative approaches. Moreover, several methodologies aim to assess the vulnerability of multiple targets to specific natural hazards by means of vulnerability functions and indicators at the regional and local scale.
The overall results of the review show that multi-risk approaches do not consider the effects of climate change and mostly rely on the analysis of static vulnerability (i.e. no time-dependent vulnerabilities, no changes among exposed elements). A relevant challenge is therefore to develop comprehensive formal approaches for the assessment of different climate-induced hazards and risks, including dynamic exposure and vulnerability. This requires the selection and aggregation of suitable hazard and vulnerability metrics to make a synthesis of information about multiple climate impacts, the spatial analysis and ranking of risks, including their visualization and communication to end-users. To face these issues, climate impact assessors should develop cross-sectorial collaborations among different expertise (e.g. modellers, natural scientists, economists) integrating information on climate change scenarios with sectorial climate impact assessment, towards the development of a comprehensive multi-risk assessment process.
•Key definitions of multi-hazard, multi-hazard risk and multi-risk are explored.•Relevant organizations, tools, projects and methodologies are critically reviewed.•Gaps and challenges toward the development of a multi-risk assessment for climate change impacts are discussed.
In the modern economy, international value chains—production, use, and disposal of goods—have global environmental impacts. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) aims to track these impacts and assess them ...from a systems perspective, identifying strategies for improvement without burden shifting. We review recent developments in LCA, including existing and emerging applications aimed at supporting environmentally informed decisions in policy-making, product development and procurement, and consumer choices. LCA constitutes a viable screening tool that can pinpoint environmental hotspots in complex value chains, but we also caution that completeness in scope comes at the price of simplifications and uncertainties. Future advances of LCA in enhancing regional detail and accuracy as well as broadening the assessment to economic and social aspects will make it more relevant for producers and consumers alike.
The study of environmental DNA (eDNA) has the potential to revolutionize biodiversity science and conservation action by enabling the census of species on a global scale in near real time. To achieve ...this promise, technical challenges must be resolved. In this review, we explore the main uses of eDNA as well as the complexities introduced by its misuse. Current eDNA methods require refinement and improved calibration and validation along the entire workflow to lessen false positives negatives. Moreover, there is great need for a better understanding of the "natural history" of eDNA-its origins, state, lifetime, and transportation-and for more detailed insights concerning the physical and ecological limitations of eDNA use. Although eDNA analysis can provide powerful information, particularly in freshwater and marine environments, its impact is likely to be less significant in terrestrial settings. The broad adoption of eDNA tools in conservation will largely depend on addressing current uncertainties in data interpretation.
Environmental impacts of climate change adaptation Enríquez-de-Salamanca, Álvaro; Díaz-Sierra, Rubén; Martín-Aranda, Rosa M. ...
Environmental impact assessment review,
05/2017, Volume:
64
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Climate change adaptation reduces adverse effects of climate change but may also have undesirable environmental impacts. However, these impacts are yet poorly defined and analysed in the existing ...literature. To complement this knowledge-gap, we reviewed the literature to unveil the relationship between climate change adaptation and environmental impact assessment, and the degree to which environmental impacts are included in climate change adaptation theory and practice. Our literature review showed that technical, social and economic perspectives on climate change adaptation receive much more attention than the environmental perspective. The scarce interest on the environmental impacts of adaptation may be attributed to (1) an excessive sectoral approach, with dominance of non-environmental perspectives, (2) greater interest in mitigation and direct climate change impacts rather than in adaptation impacts, (3) a tendency to consider adaptation as inherently good, and (4) subjective/preconceived notions on which measures are good or bad, without a comprehensive assessment. Environmental Assessment (EA) has a long established history as an effective tool to include environment into decision-making, although it does not yet guarantee a proper assessment of adaptation, because it is still possible to postpone or even circumvent the processes of assessing the impacts of climate adaptation. Our results suggest that there is a need to address adaptation proactively by including it in EA, to update current policy frameworks, and to demand robust and reliable evaluation of alternatives. Only through the full EA of adaptation measures can we improve our understanding of the primary and secondary impacts of adaptation to global environmental change.
•Climate change adaptation may have undesirable environmental impacts.•The impacts of adaptation are yet poorly analysed in the literature.•There is an excessive sectoral approach to adaptation, mainly non-environmental.
Hydrogen is a clean, renewable secondary energy source. The development of hydrogen energy is a common goal pursued by many countries to combat the current global warming trend. This paper provides ...an overview of various technologies for hydrogen production from renewable and non-renewable resources, including fossil fuel or biomass-based hydrogen production, microbial hydrogen production, electrolysis and thermolysis of water and thermochemical cycles. The current status of development, recent advances and challenges of different hydrogen production technologies are also reviewed. Finally, we compared different hydrogen production methods in terms of cost and life cycle environmental impact assessment. The current mainstream approach is to obtain hydrogen from natural gas and coal, although their environmental impact is significant. Electrolysis and thermochemical cycle methods coupled with new energy sources show considerable potential for development in terms of economics and environmental friendliness.
Display omitted
•Various H2 production methods from renewable/non-renewable resources were reviewed.•H2 production methods were compared in terms of cost and life cycle assessment.•The current mainstream approach is to obtain hydrogen from natural gas and coal.•Electrolysis and thermochemical cycle using new clean energy are more sustainable.
•A new method for environmental impact assessment is proposed.•The proposed method is more effective by considering various types of uncertainty.•A new representation of uncertain information, called ...D numbers, is presented.•This paper provides a new framework for the environmental impact assessment.
Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a complex problem influenced by many aspects, such as environmental, social, economic, etc. Due to the involvement of human judgment, various uncertainties are introduced in the EIA process. One critical issue of EIA is the representation and handling of uncertain information. Many different theories are available to deal with uncertainty, however, deficiencies exist in these theories. In this paper, based on a more effective representation of uncertainty, called D numbers, a new method is proposed for the EIA problem. In the proposed method, the assessment results of environmental impacts are expressed and modeled by D numbers. An illustrative case is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
How do we take stock of the state and direction of the world’s environment, and what can we learn from the experience? Among the myriad detailed narratives about the condition of the planet, the ...Global Environment Outlook (GEO) reports—issued by the United Nations Environment Programme—stand out as the most ambitious. For nearly three decades the GEO project has not only delivered iconic global assessment reports, but through its multitude of contributors has inspired hundreds of similar processes worldwide from the regional to the local level. This book provides an inside account of the evolution of the GEO project from its earliest days. Building on meticulous research, including interviews with former heads of the United Nations Environment Programme, diplomats, leading contributing scientists, and senior leaders of collaborating organizations, the story is told from the perspective of five GEO veterans who all played a pivotal role in shaping the periodic assessments. The GEO’s history provides striking insights and will save valuable time to those who commission, design and conduct, as well as critique and improve, assessments of environmental development in the next decade.
Domestic wastewater is a significant reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes, which pose environmental and public health risks. We aimed to define an antibiotic resistome signature, represented by ...core genes, i.e., shared by ≥ 90% of the metagenomes of each of three conceptual environmental compartments – wastewater (influent, sludge, effluent), freshwater, and agricultural soil. The definition of resistome signatures would support the proposal of a framework for monitoring treatment efficacy and assessing the impact of treated wastewater discharge into the environment, such as freshwater and agricultural soil.
Metagenomic data from 163 samples originating from wastewater (n = 81), freshwater (n = 58), and agricultural soils (n = 24) across different regions (29 countries, 5 continents), were analysed regarding antibiotic resistance diversity, based on annotation against a database that merged CARD and ResFinder databases. The relative abundance of the total antibiotic resistance genes (corresponding to the ratio between the antibiotic resistance genes and total reads number) was not statistically different between raw and treated wastewater, being significantly higher than in freshwater or agricultural soils. The latter had the significantly lowest relative abundance of antibiotic resistance genes. Genes conferring resistance to aminoglycosides, beta-lactams, and tetracyclines were among the most abundant in wastewater environments, while multidrug resistance was equally distributed across all environments. The wastewater resistome signature included 27 antibiotic resistance genes that were detected in at least 90% of the wastewater resistomes, and that were not frequent in freshwater or agricultural soil resistomes. Among these were genes responsible for resistance to tetracyclines (n = 8), macrolide-lincosamide-streptogramin B (n = 7), aminoglycosides (n = 4), beta-lactams (n = 3), multidrug (n = 2), sulphonamides (n = 2), and polypeptides (n = 1). This comprehensive assessment provides valuable insights into the dynamics of antibiotic resistance in urban wastewater systems and their potential ecological implications in diverse environmental settings. Furthermore, provides guidance for the implementation of One Health monitoring approaches.
Display omitted
•Wastewater, freshwater, and agricultural soil resistomes were screened for shared genes.•Wastewater (influent, sludge, effluent) resistome signature comprised >50 genes.•For freshwater it was not possible to define a signature resistome.•In agricultural soil the resistome signature contained 12 genes.•27 wastewater resistome signature genes are proposed to chase wastewater impacts.
PDF
