PLOS Sustainability and Transformation最新文献

{"title":"Psychometric analysis of the ecological dispositions of rural farming communities in South Africa: Implications for human excreta reuse in agriculture","authors":"Simon Gwara, E. Wale, A. Odindo","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000019","url":null,"abstract":"The established link between anthropogenic activities and environmental problems calls for the understanding of public perceptions of the environment. Circular bioeconomy approaches promote sustainable and resilient food systems, and are critical to address soil, human, and environmental health. This study endeavours to understand the ecological worldviews of rural farming communities and implications for human excreta reuse in agriculture. The study adopted the social psychology theory and the new ecological paradigm scale, which measures environmental attitudes. The Cronbach’s alpha factoring indicated high internal consistency and reliability of the questions. The results show that rural farmers are moderately environmentally conscious. The hierarchical regression results show that age, education, and household income negatively influence environmental attitudes. Pro-environmental farmers perceived lower health risk and believed that they were more capable of using human excreta. The study recommends that the reuse of human excreta in agriculture be marketed as a sustainable and environmentally friendly innovation to increase social acceptance by rural farmers in agri-food systems.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114167638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pesticide misuse among small Andean farmers stems from pervasive misinformation by retailers","authors":"Q. Struelens, Marco Rivera, Mariana Alem Zabalaga, Raul Ccanto, Reinaldo Quispe Tarqui, D. Mina, C. Carpio, María Rosa Yumbla Mantilla, Mélany Osorio, Soraya Roman, Diego Muñoz, O. Dangles","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000017","url":null,"abstract":"A critical issue in the context of sustainable agriculture is the reduction of pesticides. Despite well-known adverse effects, farmers around the world continue using pesticides with mostly inappropriate ways. Relevant policies have assumed that farmers themselves are primarily responsible for pesticide misuse. However, the responsibility of pesticide retailers has never been quantified due to the difficulty in obtaining reliable data. An empirical study was conducted with smallholder farmers who collected 9,670 pesticide retailers’ recommendations from 1489 surveys in the highlands of Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. This original design allowed obtaining for the first time genuine responses about pesticide recommendations from retailers at a large scale. When comparing retailers’ recommendations with product datasheets, the results suggest that 88.2% of recommendations standards were incorrectly followed resulting in dosing recommendations that were either excessive or insufficient and accurate less than 12% of the time. An in-depth analysis also showed that 79.2% of recommended products pertained to only 6 modes of action, thus increasing the risks of pest resistance. An expert retailer model further showed that all highly toxic pesticides could be replaced by less-toxic ones. Several ways to alleviate these detrimental consequences are proposed, by acting at the root of pesticide misuse–at the retailer’s recommendation stage.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129788871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Can economic development be a driver of food system sustainability? Empirical evidence from a global sustainability index and a multi-country analysis","authors":"C. Béné, J. Fanzo, H. Achicanoy, M. Lundy","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000013","url":null,"abstract":"Despite representing a growing element of the international community’s discourse, the sustainability of food systems and the challenge of its empirical measurement are still highly debated. In this paper, we propose to address this gap by computing a global food system sustainability index which we then use in a cross-country analysis covering 94 countries in low-, middle- and high-income regions. The analysis reveals a strong non-linear but positive correlation between the food system sustainability index and countries’ individual GDP per capita. This relationship suggests some possible degree of endogeneity between food system sustainability and economic development. We then use the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways framework and Individual Conditional Expectations modeling techniques to explore how the sustainability of food systems is projected to evolve in the future as countries move up the economic development ladder. The projections indicate that for lower income countries, the change is usually more significant than for higher income countries. The analysis also reveals that the different dimensions of sustainability will not all contribute equally to future improvements in food system sustainability. In particular, investments targeting social and food security & nutrition dimensions are projected to have a greater effect on the sustainability of food systems than investment/interventions aiming at the environment or economic domains. For countries located at the lower end of the economic development spectrum, this would imply that, even with limited resources, policy-makers could substantially improve the sustainability of countries’ food systems by prioritizing (sub)national policies and interventions focused on social and food security & nutrition domains.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129886486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A multi-level assessment of changes in stakeholder constellations, interest and influence on ecosystem services under different landscape scenarios in southwestern Ethiopia","authors":"Tolera Senbeto Jiren, J. Schultner, D. Abson, J. Fischer","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000012","url":null,"abstract":"Growing global interconnections facilitate inter-regional flows of ecosystem services (ES). Several studies have focused on the opportunities, risks, and governance of telecoupled ES. However, considerable theoretical, methodological, and empirical gaps exist regarding how future demand for ES will shape trajectories of land use change, the bundles of ecosystem services and related livelihoods provided by future landscapes. This paper explores how multi-level stakeholder constellations, interests, and influence on ES change with a shift in the landscape from the current landscape to alternative future scenario landscapes. We integrated three methodological concepts: space-for-time substitution, scenario planning, and multi-level stakeholder interest and influence mapping. We focused on a smallholder farming landscape in southwestern Ethiopia that is characterized by, and sensitive to, rapid social-ecological change. We build on previous research that developed four plausible scenarios of landscape change for the landscape over the coming 20 years: the “Cash crops”, “Coffee investors”, “Biosphere reserve”, and “Food first” scenarios. We treated the current (focal) landscape as the baseline. Based on space-for-time substitution, we selected four existing landscapes nearby as proxies representing the types of changes described in the four scenarios. In both focal and scenario landscapes, we then identified stakeholders and interviewed them about their interest and influence related to ES (n = 122). Stakeholder constellations, interests, and influences on ES differed considerably between the focal and the scenario landscapes. Generally, a shift to the “Cash crops”, “Coffee investors”, and “Food first” scenarios increased the proportion of local, regional and global private organizations that engaged with the landscape. Many of these stakeholders sought to maximize profit through commercializing a few provisioning ES, often relying on regulatory and economic power to influence the landscape. In contrast, a change to the “Biosphere reserve” scenario increased the proportion of non-governmental organizations engaging with the landscape, and drew on stakeholders from multiple governance scales that were interested in diverse provisioning, cultural, regulating, and supporting ES. Our findings suggest that future landscapes imply divergent changes in stakeholder constellations and interests, both from proximate and remote locations. Landscape management should consider such possible changes in multi-level stakeholder constellations, interests, and influence. Our methodological approach enriches existing scenario narratives with empirically grounded social and governance layers that can improve proactive land management decisions.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"551 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116270639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Charging plastic bags: Perceptions from Japan","authors":"Yuna Seo, Fumiko Kudo","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000011","url":null,"abstract":"Mandatory charges for plastic bags at all stores was implemented in Japan in July 2020 to encourage interest in environmental issues and raise awareness of environmental risks. We conducted a survey on mandatory plastic bag charging, dealing with environmental risk perception, pro-environmental habits, attempts to reduce plastic bags, and sense of community. In this study, we assumed that factors distinguished by the behavior change after charging, that is, reduced use of plastic shopping bags or no change from before, and the relationship with other typical environmental behaviors and perceptions would suggest its long-term success. Data were collected from two groups: Group 1 consisted of those who had reduced their use of plastic bags after the implementation of the mandate, and Group 2 were those who had not changed their behavior because of the mandate. First, we extracted factors to distinguish Group 1 from Group 2 using binary regression analysis. Second, we illustrated the relationship between the attempt to reduce plastic bags and other typical environmental behaviors and perceptions by conducting structural equation modeling (SEM). The results showed that age, place of residence, observing others’ behavior, attempts to use eco-friendly bags, and energy-saving behavior were significant influential factors in reducing plastic bags. Moreover, SEM showed that it was not significantly related to pro-environmental habits but would significantly influence environmental risk perception and recycling behavior. Therefore, it is suggested that mandatory charging can raise interest in environmental issues to foster further environmental behavior, while a detailed outreach strategy considering influential factors such as age, place of residence, individual pro-environmental habits, and so on would be necessary to successfully implement this strategy.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"162 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115592922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Social–ecological systems approaches are essential for understanding and responding to the complex impacts of COVID-19 on people and the environment","authors":"A. Kadykalo, C. Beaudoin, Diana M. Hackenburg, N. Young, S. Cooke","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000006","url":null,"abstract":"The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is dramatically impacting planetary and human societal systems that are inseparably linked. Zoonotic diseases like COVID-19 expose how human well-being is inextricably interconnected with the environment and to other converging (human driven) social–ecological crises, such as the dramatic losses of biodiversity, land use change, and climate change. We argue that COVID-19 is itself a social–ecological crisis, but responses so far have not been inclusive of ecological resiliency, in part because the “Anthropause” metaphor has created an unrealistic sense of comfort that excuses inaction. Anthropause narratives belie the fact that resource extraction has continued during the pandemic and that business-as-usual continues to cause widespread ecosystem degradation that requires immediate policy attention. In some cases, COVID-19 policy measures further contributed to the problem such as reducing environmental taxes or regulatory enforcement. While some social–ecological systems (SES) are experiencing reduced impacts, others are experiencing what we term an “Anthrocrush,” with more visitors and intensified use. The varied causes and impacts of the pandemic can be better understood with a social–ecological lens. Social–ecological insights are necessary to plan and build the resilience needed to tackle the pandemic and future social–ecological crises. If we as a society are serious about building back better from the pandemic, we must embrace a set of research and policy responses informed by SES thinking.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125271265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Food security and small holder farming in Pacific Island countries and territories: A scoping review","authors":"Nichole Georgeou, C. Hawksley, Nidhi Wali, Sophie Lountain, E. Rowe, Caleb West, Liesje Barratt","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000009","url":null,"abstract":"UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2: Zero Hunger links ending hunger to achieving food security, improving nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture. The Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) is a region where such linkages can be investigated as the PICTs are confronting climate change while facing a decrease in available arable land and increasing rates of urbanisation. Around 80% of all Pacific Islanders still rely on agricultural produce from their own gardens or from small holder farmers to support or to supplement their diets. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has declared the years 2019–2028 to be the Decade of Family Farming. Food imports are increasingly common in PICTs, and can provide cheap, although not particularly nutritious foods, leading to generalised health problems. Increased reliance on imports is itself an indicator of diminishing food security, and with the PICTs facing a range of food security challenges, it is timely to assess the existing literature in the PICTs on the relationship between smallholder farming and food security. This scoping review analyses 49 peer reviewed and grey literature studies in English from 1970–2019 concerning the relationship between food security and small holder farming in the PICTs. It identifies four main themes: (1) Community adaptation, resilience and crop diversification; (2) Decreased availability of local foods and land; (3) Changes in diet; (4) Gender and agricultural production. The review shows Pacific peoples quickly adapt to changing circumstances to plant different crops both for food and for sale, and it identifies the role of small holder agriculture as crucial to: (1) growing local foods to support food security, and (2) expanding domestic asset creation to promote economic development, especially for women.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124175724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, empowering immediate actions for a sustainable future","authors":"L. P. Koh","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000004","url":null,"abstract":"Climate scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies reported 2020 as the warmest year on record [1];the Gulf Stream has slowed down dramatically [2];the Last Ice Area has melted away faster than previously estimated [3];and coral reefs continue their constant and global decline [4]. The effects of the pandemic and climate change have also led to a rebalance in focus between efficiency and resilience across the public, private, and people sectors in society. The fodder for our global body of knowledge ultimately are the outputs and insights from our researchers and thought leaders.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"307 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121163087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Maximising sustainable nutrient production from coupled fisheries-aquaculture systems","authors":"David F. Willer, James P. W. Robinson, G. T. Patterson, Karen Luyckx","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000005","url":null,"abstract":"Aquaculture expansion is expected to meet growing demand for sustainable animal-source foods. Yet marine-fed species already require millions of tonnes of wild-caught fish for feed, over 90% of which are nutritious food-grade species. Allocating feed fish for human consumption could reduce pressure on marine resources while increasing seafood production. We examine micronutrient flows (the transfer of micronutrients from feed to fish) in Scotland’s farmed salmon industry, which is particularly reliant on marine feeds, to show that 1–49% of essential dietary minerals and fatty acids available in wild fish are retained in farmed salmon. Using three alternative production scenarios we show that reducing marine feeds in salmon production and allocating wild-caught feed fish for human consumption could produce more nutritious seafood and leave 66–82% of feed fish in the sea. Using global data on marine-fed aquaculture production, we show that removing wild-caught fish from salmonid production could leave 3.7 Mt fish in the sea while increasing global seafood production by 6.1 Mt.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126700536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Evaluating systemic innovation and transition programmes: Towards a culture of learning","authors":"Matthijs J. Janssen, Anna Bergek, J. Wesseling","doi":"10.1371/journal.pstr.0000008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000008","url":null,"abstract":"Innovation systems and transitions thinking have become increasingly pervasive in what has been labelled a third generation of challenge-led innovation and transitions policy programmes. Although this upsurge is cause for celebration, we argue that the challenge now lies in developing the evaluation methods that allow for the assessment of strong and weak programmes, to foster a culture of learning and to maintain momentum. Therefore, in this brief review, we take stock of existing approaches and identify 6 tentative categories of evaluations, which we map out on the axis of formative and summative evaluation. Combining summative evaluations with more frequent formative evaluations may create the environment for rapid learning and policy adaptation necessary to prevent the current rise of systemic innovation and transition programmes from being short lived.","PeriodicalId":384293,"journal":{"name":"PLOS Sustainability and Transformation","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125879997","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}