Global sustainability research platform. Erik Pihl background.
A decade-long commercial fishing ban across the Yangtze basin — affecting an area the size of Mexico — shows early signs of reversing biodiversity loss. The scale of intervention required reveals what ecological restoration actually demands.
New lifecycle analysis reveals bioplastics reduce carbon but harm ecosystems more than fossil alternatives — a material governance challenge where the only path to climate targets involves reducing demand itself.
A three-year transnational project examines how nature-based infrastructure performs in post-disaster cities across Japan, Sweden, and Poland — treating urban recovery as a testing ground for ecological governance under stress.
New satellite research reveals that 40% of corn and 60% of wheat depend on land-based rainfall — unstable moisture from forests, wetlands, and soil that agricultural expansion is actively destroying.
Coral reefs could sustainably yield 9,000 additional meals per square kilometer — but only if communities dependent on fishing accept decades of reduced catch. A stark example of governance as temporal negotiation.
ESA's Digital Twin Earth program creates real-time planetary simulations — not just to model floods or fire, but to stress-test governance responses before disaster strikes. It's scenario planning made operational, fed by satellite data and constrained by physics.
The first fast-track business-biodiversity assessment reveals a stark asymmetry: $7.3 trillion in nature-harming flows versus $220 billion for restoration — a gap that threatens economic stability and requires governance innovation at the intersection of markets and ecosystems.
Researchers, policymakers, and industry practitioners gathered in Taipei to explore how artificial intelligence can serve planetary resilience — examining not just technical potential but governance frameworks for equitable deployment.
Researchers at Bonn University developed a self-cleaning filter modeled on fish gills that captures microplastics from washing machines — addressing a governance gap where household infrastructure meets ocean pollution.
Researchers propose harvesting boreal forest timber and sinking it in the oxygen-poor Arctic Ocean — a carbon removal method that sidesteps infrastructure costs but raises questions about who governs such planetary-scale interventions.