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Our planet is facing increasing challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemics, poverty, and many other problems closely linked to a deteriorating environment. Meanwhile, one of our most important assets, rangers working in protected and conserved areas responsible for managing large tracts of the planet's lands and waters, are often underutilized, underrecognized and underequipped. They are generally left out of the debate about conservation and sustainable development policy, despite being central to the success of those policies. This paper outlines the need for global leaders across multiple sectors to recognize the profession of rangers as essential planetary health workers and to position rangers more effectively within global conservation and environmental policy mechanisms. It introduces the challenges facing rangers, the emerging diversity of roles within the ranger profession and the important contribution of rangers to conservation and sustainable development. It presents policy and implementation avenues to improve recognition and professionalization of rangers as key executors of conservation and development policy, particularly considering the recent Global Biodiversity Framework ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the European Union's main instrument for agricultural planning, with a new reform approved for 2023–2027. The CAP intends to align with the European Green Deal (EGD), a set of policy initiatives underpinning sustainable development and climate neutrality in the European Union (EU), but several flaws cast doubts about the compatibility of the objectives of these 2 policies. We reviewed recent literature on the potential of CAP environmental objectives for integration with the EGD: protection of biodiversity, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and sustainable management of natural resources. The CAP lacks appropriate planning measures, furthering instead risks to biodiversity and ecosystem services driven by landscape and biotic homogenization. Funding allocation mechanisms are not tailored to mitigate agricultural emissions, decreasing the efficiency of climate mitigation actions. The legislation subsidies farmers making extensive use of synthetic inputs without adequately supporting organic production, hindering the transition toward sustainable practices. We recommend proper control mechanisms be introduced in CAP Strategic Plans from each member state to ensure the EU is set on a sustainable production and consumption path. These include proportional assignment of funds to each CAP objective, quantitative targets to set goals and evidence‐based interventions, and relevant indicators to facilitate effective monitoring of environmental performance. Both the CAP and the EGD should maintain ambitious environmental commitments in the face of crisis to avoid further degradation of the natural resources on which production systems stand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mechanisms that reliably and efficiently guide practitioners to find relevant evidence are urgent for conservation decision‐making in Chilean Patagonia. The objective of this study was to systematically collect, characterize, and synthesize the extensive evidence about conservation knowledge in Chilean Patagonia focusing on the impacts of global change drivers on ecosystems and human–nature relationships, identifying knowledge gaps, and providing policy recommendations. The quality of the evidence was assessed through a predefined level‐of‐evidence hierarchy scale, applied to a sample of the studies reviewed. We compiled ~1000 studies documenting that evidence focusing on terrestrial and marine ecosystems has grown exponentially. For terrestrial ecosystems, most studies have addressed climate change, habitat change, and invasive species; while for marine ecosystems, studies have focused on pollution, invasive species, and habitat change. We identified that an important gap is the study of the social dimensions of conservation, and future efforts should focus on incorporating traditional and local knowledge as this can help point the way to ecosystem conservation. The appraisal of the quality of the evidence showed that ~80% of the sample represented reliable evidence with underlying data and an experimental design. Enhanced efforts to deliver this evidence to decision‐makers in a user‐friendly format for evidence uptake in conservation policy are urgent. In this review, we provide a tool that can help practitioners to find evidence reliably to improve decision‐making for the conservation of ecosystems in Chilean Patagonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) scenarios provide opportunities to explore global climate and pollution mitigation pathways with socioeconomic features, but they might be limited on regional-scale projections due to inadequate consideration of local policies. Here, we simulated China's PM2.5 air quality with local policy-based scenarios (Dynamic Projection for Emissions in China (DPEC)) and the CMIP6 scenarios. We found both emission inventories can reproduce China's base-year PM2.5 and chemical aerosols while using DPEC emissions could better match in-situ observations. In addition, DPEC mitigation scenarios can better capture China's PM2.5 decline during 2015-2019 (22% under SSP2-45-policy and 30% under SSP1-26-best) with observations (~28%) than CMIP6 emissions. With the effects of current-year bias and inadequate considerations of pollution control policies, PM2.5 projections in 2030 and 2050 with CMIP6 mitigation scenarios are 42%-48% (9-13 µg/m3) and 59%-73% (8-12 µg/m3) higher than projections with DEPC. Our study suggests the community should incorporate more region-specific environmental policy in future scenario designs. Plain Language Summary Global emission scenarios might be limited on regional-scale air quality projections because of inadequate consideration of local environmental policy. Here, we simulated China's air quality variations through 2050 with global emission data sets and local policy-based emission scenarios. Both global and local emissions can reasonably estimate China's air quality; however, estimations with local emission scenarios are more correlated with surface observations and can better capture China's rapid air quality improvement during 2015-2019. Local policy deficiencies and current year bias further make future air quality projections driven by global emission scenarios 42%-73% higher than driven by local policy-based scenarios. Our findings could offer insights for the research community to incorporate more detailed regional information in future global scenario designs, which might help to better investigate the climate change impacts and improve global scenario applicability to regional scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a key threat to biodiversity. To conserve species under climate change, ecologists and conservation scientists suggest 2 main conservation strategies regarding land use: supporting species' range shifts to enable it to follow its climatic requirements by creating migration pathways, such as corridors and stepping stones, and conserving climate refugia (i.e., existing habitat areas that are somewhat buffered from climate change). The policy instruments that could be used to implement these conservation strategies have yet to be evaluated comprehensively from an economic perspective. The economic analyses of environmental policy instruments are often based on ecological effectiveness and cost‐effectiveness criteria. We adapted these general criteria to evaluate policy instruments for species' conservation under climate change and applied them to a conceptual analysis of land purchases, offsets, and conservation payments. Depending on whether the strategy supporting species' range shifts or conserving climate refugia is selected, the evaluation of the policy instruments differed substantially. For example, to ensure ecological effectiveness, habitat persistence over time was especially important for climate refugia and was best achieved by a land‐purchase policy instrument. In contrast, for the strategy supporting range shifts to be ecologically effective, a high degree of flexibility in the location of conserved sites was required to ensure that new habitat sites can be created in the species' new range. Offset programs were best suited for that because the location of conservation sites can be chosen comparatively freely and may also be adapted over time. Article impact statement: Evaluation of policy instruments for species conservation under climate change should include both ecological and economic criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity loss and climate change are often considered as intertwined issues. However, they do not receive equal attention. Even in the context of nature‐based climate solutions, which consider ecosystems to be crucial to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change, the potential role of biodiversity has received little attention. Here this essay emphasizes biodiversity as the cause—not only the consequence—to help society and nature face challenges associated with the changing climate. Reconsidering and emphasizing the linkages between these twin environmental crises is urgently needed to make collective efforts for the environment truly effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: China has assumed a crucial importance in debates about climate change mitigation. On the one hand, China is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gasses and pollution. On the other, it has invested more in renewable energy than any other country and is making real efforts to address the consequences of rapid industrialisation. There are three key questions for students of comparative political economy that emerge from the Chinese experience: first, what is the relationship between economic development and authoritarian rule? Second, what role has China's distinct social and political system played in creating and addressing environmental problems? Third, what domestic and international implications does the ‘China model’ have? In short, will China's authoritarian leaders be able to manage the expectations of its own people and those of the so‐called international community? This article considers the often paradoxical and contradictory nature of the authoritarian Chinese government's current environmental policies and suggests that while they may have some success at the domestic level, they may still be an obstacle to international cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last quarter of a century, physical geography has not been served well by the often-homogenizing influence of global change science, as exemplified by the structures and activities of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, certain areas of physical geography may have been at fault in being too little, and too uncritically, engaged with international, interdisciplinary research programmes in global environmental change. Moving forward, physical geography should look towards an independently constituted framework that incorporates the complexities of landscape response to both external forcing and internal feedbacks and, above all, works with others to prevent the socio-spatial injustices associated with climate change from being realized. Réflexions menées sur le GIEC et l'étude scientifique des changements planétaires : vers une approche plus axée sur la géographie (physique) Au cours du dernier quart de siècle, la géographie physique a été desservie par l'effet d'homogénéisation de l'étude scientifique des changements planétaires, comme en témoignent les structures et activités du Groupe d'experts intergouvernemental sur l'évolution du climat (GIEC). Par contre, certains domaines de la géographie physique pourraient être en partie responsables du fait que peu d'efforts aient été consacrés à l'étude et à la remise en question des programmes de recherche internationaux et interdisciplinaires portant sur les changements environnementaux planétaires. Pour la géographie physique, la mise en place d'un cadre de travail conçu de manière indépendante permettrait de progresser et d'intégrer tous les éléments de problématique de la réaction du paysage au forçage externe et aux rétroactions internes, mais aussi et surtout d'assurer une collaboration en vue d'éviter que se concrétisent les injustices sociospatiales liées aux conséquences des changements climatiques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Understanding the impact of land use change within assemblages is fundamental to mitigation policies at local and regional scale. Here, we aim to quantify how site-level terrestrial assemblages are responding to land use change in Colombia a mega-diverse country and to project future biodiversity under different scenarios of land use change associated with climate change policies. Location: Colombia (northern South America). Methods: We collated original biodiversity data from 17 publications (285 sites) that examined how human impact affects terrestrial biodiversity in Colombia. From each site we estimated compositional intactness (i.e. compositional similarity to undisturbed sites). We fitted generalized linear mixed-effects models to estimate how these measures of local biodiversity vary across land use habitats. Using space-for-time substitution, we applied our estimates to hindcast biodiversity changes since 1500 and project future changes under climate change policies of the four representative concentration pathways (RCPs). Results: Assemblages in urban, cropland and pasture sites were compositionally very different from those in primary vegetation. We infer that average compositional intactness has been reduced by 18% across Colombia to date, with strong regional variation. The best RCP scenario for future biodiversity is GCAM-RCP4.5, a path that favours the expansion of secondary forests under a strong carbon market; while the worst is MESSAGE-RCP8.5, 'the business-as-usual' scenario. Main conclusions: Land use change has driven an increasing change in the composition of ecological assemblages in Colombia. By 2095, the implementation of carbon markets policy of climate change from GCAM-RCP4.5 could mitigate these changes in community composition. In contrast, the business-asusual scenario MESSAGE-RCP8.5 predicts a steep community change placing the quality of ecosystems at risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the interactions between agricultural production and climate is necessary for sound decision-making in climate policy. Gridded and high-resolution crop simulation has emerged as a useful tool for building this understanding. Large uncertainty exists in this utilization, obstructing its capacity as a tool to devise adaptation strategies. Increasing focus has been given to sources of uncertainties for climate scenarios, input-data, and model, but uncertainties due to model parameter or calibration are still unknown. Here, we use publicly available geographical data sets as input to the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate model (EPIC) for simulating global-gridded maize yield. Impacts of climate change are assessed up to the year 2099 under a climate scenario generated by HadEM2-ES under RCP 8.5. We apply five strategies by shifting one specific parameter in each simulation to calibrate the model and understand the effects of calibration. Regionalizing crop phenology or harvest index appears effective to calibrate the model for the globe, but using various values of phenology generates pronounced difference in estimated climate impact. However, projected impacts of climate change on global maize production are consistently negative regardless of the parameter being adjusted. Different values of model parameter result in a modest uncertainty at global level, with difference of the global yield change less than 30% by the 2080s. The uncertainty subjects to decrease if applying model calibration or input data quality control. Calibration has a larger effect at local scales, implying the possible types and locations for adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the environmental condition in Saudi Arabia. The author highlights the climatic condition of the country comparing it to a furnace not to mention the effects of climate change due to extensive carbon emission in the atmosphere. Furthermore, the author also outlined the plans of the Saudi Arabian government to address the issue including the establishment environmental programs and the transition from carbon-based economy to renewable energy.

The absence of boreal forests from global policy agendas on sustainable development and climate change mitigation represents a massive missed opportunity for environmental protection. The boreal zone contains some of the world's largest pools of terrestrial carbon that, if not safeguarded from a conversion to a net source of greenhouse gases, could seriously exacerbate global climate change. At the same time, boreal countries have a strong tradition of forest management-expertise that could be effectively leveraged toward global and national carbon mitigation targets and sustainable development. Current obstacles against such contributions include weak incentives for carbon sequestration and a reluctance to embrace change by forest managers and policy makers. We discuss possible solutions to overcome these obstacles, including the improvement of ineffective incentives, the development of alternative forest management strategies, and the need to maintain ecosystem resilience through the pursuit of policy and management options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macroalgae drive the largest CO2 flux fixed globally by marine macrophytes. Most of the resulting biomass is exported through the coastal ocean as detritus and yet almost no field measurements have verified its potential net sequestration in marine sediments. This gap limits the scope for the inclusion of macroalgae within blue carbon schemes that support ocean carbon sequestration globally, and the understanding of the role their carbon plays within distal food webs. Here, we pursued three lines of evidence (eDNA sequencing, Bayesian Stable Isotope Mixing Modeling, and benthic‐pelagic process measurements) to generate needed, novel data addressing this gap. To this end, a 13‐month study was undertaken at a deep coastal sedimentary site in the English Channel, and the surrounding shoreline of Plymouth, UK. The eDNA sequencing indicated that detritus from most macroalgae in surrounding shores occurs within deep, coastal sediments, with detritus supply reflecting the seasonal ecology of individual species. Bayesian stable isotope mixing modeling [C and N] highlighted its vital role in supporting the deep coastal benthic food web (22–36% of diets), especially when other resources are seasonally low. The magnitude of detritus uptake within the food web and sediments varies seasonally, with an average net sedimentary organic macroalgal carbon sequestration of 8.75 g C·m−2·yr−1. The average net sequestration of particulate organic carbon in sediments is 58.74 g C·m−2·yr−1, the two rates corresponding to 4–5% and 26–37% of those associated with mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrass beds, systems more readily identified as blue carbon habitats. These novel data provide important first estimates that help to contextualize the importance of macroalgal‐sedimentary connectivity for deep coastal food webs, and measured fluxes help constrain its role within global blue carbon that can support policy development. At a time when climate change mitigation is at the foreground of environmental policy development, embracing the full potential of the ocean in supporting climate regulation via CO2 sequestration is a necessity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The world conference (Conference of the Parties (COP23)) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change took place in Bonn (Germany) from 6 to 17 November. Speakers at the meeting stressed the severity of the threat from global warming and the urgent need to act but what commitments came out of the COP23 meeting? Alexandra Carrick gives a short summary of the meeting and some of the energy outcomes of the conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]