Designing sustainable landuse in a 1.5 °C world: the complexities of projecting multiple ecosystem services from land

Land provides a range of critical services for humanity (including the provision of food, water and energy). It also provides many services that are often socially valuable but may not have a market value. Demand projections for land-based services, accounting for the significant requirement for negative emissions needed to meet a 1.5 °C pathway, may exceed what can be sustainably supplied. It is therefore critical to explore how to optimise land use (and if necessary, limit demand), so societies can continue to benefit from all services into the future. Unlike the energy or the transport sectors, however, there is limited understanding or consensus over what ‘optimal’ land use might look like (from a science perspective), or how to bring it about (from a governance perspective)

Review of the mechanical and fracture behavior of perovskite lead-free ferroelectrics for actuator applications

There has been considerable progress in the development of large strain lead-free perovskite ferroelectrics over the past decade. Under certain conditions, the electromechanical properties of some compositions now match or even surpass commercially available lead-containing materials over a wide temperature range, making them potentially attractive for non-resonant displacement applications. However, the phenomena responsible for the large unipolar strains and piezoelectric responses can be markedly different to classical ferroelectrics such as Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 and BaTiO3. Despite the promising electromechanical properties, there is little understanding of the mechanical properties and fracture behavior, which is crucial for their implementation into applications where they will be exposed to large electrical, mechanical, and thermal fields. This work discusses and reviews the current understanding of the mechanical behavior of large-strain perovskite lead-free ferroelectrics for use in actuators and provides recommendations for further work in this important field

Group membership and certification effects on incomes of coffee farmers in Uganda

Discrepancies in certification effects on smallholder incomes have been found in scientific literature. Unobserved farmer-group heterogeneity is a likely reason. For the long-standing Robusta coffee farmer-groups in Uganda, we find no significant effect of certification on net-farm income. But, we find 20 percentage point differences in net-farm income between certified and non-certified farmers explained by membership duration. In contrast, the recently founded certified Arabica coffee farmer-groups have positive net-farm income effects of 151 per cent, partly explained by a higher degree of vertical integration. With or without certification, long-standing group membership is found to have positive income effects

1s2: Can dietary recommendations of animal source food align with circular production principles?

A change of human diets has potential for reducing environmental pressures that originate from food production. Food Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs) can support this change by informing consumers about dietary patterns and behaviour. However, FBDGs are generally designed from health principles and do not include environmental aspects like resource suitability and environmental consequences of the associated food production. Recent research shows that applying circularity principles in food production, suchas raising livestock solely on non-edible feedstuffs, leads to resource efficiency and can therefore reduce environmental pressures. Our aim was to assess and integrate nutritional and environmental consequences of limiting animal-source food (ASF) recommendations to livestock raised in a circular food system. We therefore assessed if the recommended ASF in FBDGs from five European countries (Bulgaria, Malta, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland) could be met by livestock fed only with nationally available non-edible feedstuffs. A resource optimization model was used to allocate non-edible feedstuffs to either dairy cows, beef cows, pigs or chicken, to include all recommended ASF types in the diet. The resulting quantities of ASF were assessed for global warming potential, land use, and their nutritional contribution. The results showed that the quantities of recommended ASF in FBDGs were substantially high with a contribution between 34 to 56 g/cap/day to total recommended protein. These quantities of recommended ASF were not compatible with the amount and nutritional contribution of ASF in a circular food system. Furthermore there were large differences between individual countries that could be assigned to cultural and geographical circumstances. For example, in Malta only 15.9 g protein per capita per day could be produced with the nationally available non-edible feedstuffs while in Switzerland 38.9 g per capita per day could be produced. Although these protein quantities are almost one third up to half of the daily human protein needs, they did not meet the ASF recommendations in these countries’ FBDGs. We conclude that when livestock is only fed on non-edible feedstuff that is nationally available, the available ASF for human consumption can cover a significant amount of nutrient requirements while the related dietary pattern can contribute to a more climate-friendly food system. Using circularity principles, health and environment can be aligned, which emphasizes the opportunity to create future guidelines with a holistic approach