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In addition to providing food, farming systems provide ecosystem services such as flood control, water quality control, carbon storage, and waste treatment, as well as cultural services such as scenic beauty, education, recreation, and tourism. However, the value of these services may conceal large costs that have been ignored by scholars. In this study, our goals were to perform a more complete cost–benefit analysis of farmland than has been done in previous research, thereby providing an improved estimate of the net benefits of that land use, and to explore the variation in the net benefits among regions. We used a novel method of quantifying costs and benefits that accounts for more of the associated costs than in previous research, and used China as an example. The annual net benefits of farmland totaled 11.8×1012RMB (Renminbi: 1 RMB = US$0.15) in 2017, which amounts to 35.3% of the total national net benefit. However, due to the adverse effects of pesticide pollution and biodiversity reduction, agriculture has a potentially negative impact on sustainable development. The annual cost of farmland in China was 5.0×1012RMB, which decreased the total benefit by 29.8%, and the annual cost of ecological protection was 1.1×1012RMB. These results demonstrate the importance of a complete assessment of the costs and benefits of farmland to support more sustainable and economically efficient land‐use planning. This will both improve the benefits and support sustainable development of farmland, while also improving the enthusiasm of farmers for their occupation. The net ecosystem services value can reveal the real benefits of an ecosystem.Evaluation of ecosystem service values provides important support for management of ecosystem.The net value is more practical than the payment for ecosystem services.

Pickering interfacial catalysis provides an excellent platform for biphasic reactions, but the separation and recycling of nanocatalysts is a challenge because of high adsorption energy of nanocatalysts at the liquid–liquid interface. In this work, we represent a new type of versatile Pickering emulsion based on magnetic and CO2-responsive nanohybrids Fe3O4@SiO2@P(TMA–DEA). The smart nanoparticles can stabilize the water-in-oil Pickering emulsion in the biphasic system and achieve the subsequent demulsification by bubbling CO2ascribed to their reversible switching surface. In the absence of energy barrier, the nanohybrids can be easily captured in situ by magnetic field in 2 min and showed excellent recyclability. In the Anelli system for alcohol oxidation, the nanocatalyst exhibited threefold enhancement in catalytic efficiency in comparison with an unemulsified two-phase and little loss on activity after five cycles. The conceptually novel dual-responsive system offers a green and energy-saving strategy for effective recycling of the nanocatalyst and intensification of biphasic reaction.

We report in this paper the design and synthesis of a pH-responsive polymeric interfacial catalyst (PIC) via one-step grafting of 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-N-oxyl (TEMPO) onto a polyaryletherketone having pendant benzimidazole groups (SCBI-PAEK-6F). The TEMPO-functionalized polymer has been systematically characterized with 1H nuclear magnetic resonance, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, elemental analysis, contact angle, and transmission electron microscopy. Moreover, this well-designed polymer has been applied in the oxidation of alcohols under Montanari conditions. It is found that the functionalized polymer can aggregate at the water–oil interface and act as an efficient stabilizer to facilitate the formation of a stable Pickering emulsion, which shows outstanding catalytic activity for alcohol oxidation through the microreactor mechanism. Moreover, the PIC is featured with desirable high pH responsiveness due to the valuable benzimidazole groups. De-emulsification of the Pickering emulsion reaction system can be conveniently triggered by simply tuning the system pH value to 3, thus facilitating the facile recovery of the PIC. In addition, the sustainable catalyst can be reused for subsequent cycles of alcohol oxidation without appreciable loss in catalytic activity or selectivity.

Protection of the ecological environment is an effective strategy for maintaining ecosystem health, improving provision of ecosystem services, and increasing human well-being. However, traditional calculations of the value of ecosystem services (VES) provide weak guidance because they ignore the costs of these services, leading to economically inefficient strategies. To understand the difference between VES and the net ecosystem services value (NES, after subtracting costs from VES) and to improve evaluations of ecosystem services, we estimated NES for mainland China (including farmland, grassland, forest, and wetland). NES totaled 10.0×103RMB ha−1yr−1in 2014, which is only 35.1% of the corresponding VES. Grassland NES was–0.7×103RMB ha−1yr−1, in contrast with a positive grassland VES. NES of farmland, grassland, forest, and wetland in 2014 totaled 7.2×1012RMB, accounting for 27.0% of China’s GNP. Recent Chinese planning based on VES emphasizes forest conservation and ignores the conservation of other important ecosystems, such as grassland, leading to a continuing loss of China’s natural capital. Due to regional differences in economic conditions, resource endowments, and geographical characteristics, VES and NES differ among regions. To maximize the ecological benefits from conservation, it is necessary to account for these differences by comparing strategies based on NES, thereby choosing projects that maximize both economic and ecological benefits. To maintain the ecological balance, ecological restoration and socioeconomic activities should account for the costs of providing ecosystem services. This is essential to minimize the costs and maximize the benefits of projects.

Nepal’s Community Forestry Program is a sustainable forest management and livelihood enhancement program reformed from earlier programs of the previous century. The government’s initial policy was to provide the basic forest resources to local communities through their active participation in forest improvement and management. Nepal’s policy and development program was based on sustainability concepts. Community forestry can be sustainable and produce socially, economically, and ecologically beneficial results. A number of both qualitative and quantitative options have been applied to measure the sustainable use of forests and other natural resources in community forests, but classifying the results is challenging. Policy-makers, experts, and the communities should be involved in developing and improving criteria and indicators for community forest management, reflecting the diversity of perspectives that must be accounted for and the increasing worldwide demand for sustainability and governance. The main findings were that sustainability can be measured with numerous tools, but there are several challenges. A literature review revealed that nationally and internationally defined criteria and indicators have not been extensively applied in Nepal due to lack of technical and other expertise.

The intensification of catalytic reaction and droplet manipulation in a liquid–liquid (L–L) biphasic system has been widely focused in this research. The surface engineering of magnetic materials offers a reasonable tactic for the design of magnetic Pickering interfacial catalysts (MPICs), which substantially bridges the gap of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis for promoting efficient and selective transformation of resources. In this study, we control the growth of organic base monomer brushes by surface-initiated reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (SIRAFT) polymerization to afford a magnetopolymeric nanocatalysts Fe3O4@PS-PM. The surface engineering strategy enables us to simply tune the surface wettability and active site content for the manipulation of emulsion catalysis. In a biphasic reaction system (i.e., transesterification and epoxidation), the catalytic performance of an emulsion system is more than twice that of an unemulsified system, which is attributed to the enhancement effect of the Pickering emulsion microenvironment. In addition, the inherent paramagnetism demonstrates that MPICs can be swiftly desorbed and recovered from the oil–water interface and showed attractive catalytic activity and stability over five runs. The practical surface engineering has promising prospects for construction and adjustment of magnetically separable PICs and enables accessible manipulation of green chemical transformation based on a versatile Pickering emulsion platform.