Challenges of metal recycling and an international covenant as possible instrument of a globally extended producer responsibility

As illustrated by the case studies of end-of-life vehicles and waste electric and electronic equipment, the approach of an extended producer responsibility is undermined by the exports of used and waste products. This fact causes severe deficits regarding circular flows, especially of critical raw materials such as platinum group metals. With regard to global recycling there seems to be a responsibility gap which leads somehow to open ends of waste flows and a loss or down-cycling of potential secondary resources. Existing product-orientated extended producer responsibility (EPR) approaches with mass-based recycling quotas do not create adequate incentives to supply waste materials containing precious metals to a high-quality recycling and should be amended by aspects of a material stewardship. The paper analyses incentive effects on EPR for the mentioned product groups and metals, resulting from existing regulations in Germany. It develops a proposal for an international covenant on metal recycling as a policy instrument for a governance-oriented framework to initiate systemic innovations along the complete value chain taking into account product group- and resource group-specific aspects on different spatial levels. It aims at the effective implementation of a central idea of EPR, the transition of a waste regime still focusing on safe disposal towards a sustainable management of resources for the complete lifecycle of products

The relationship between bioeconomy sectors and the rest of the economy

Deliverable 1.1 of the EU FP 7 SAT-BBE project Systems Analysis Tools Framework for the EU Bio-Based Economy Strateg

Semantic text mining support for lignocellulose research

Biofuels produced from biomass are considered to be promising sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels. The conversion of lignocellulose into fermentable sugars for biofuels production requires the use of enzyme cocktails that can efficiently and economically hydrolyze lignocellulosic biomass. As many fungi naturally break down lignocellulose, the identification and characterization of the enzymes involved is a key challenge in the research and development of biomass-derived products and fuels. One approach to meeting this challenge is to mine the rapidly-expanding repertoire of microbial genomes for enzymes with the appropriate catalytic properties. Semantic technologies, including natural language processing, ontologies, semantic Web services and Web-based collaboration tools, promise to support users in handling complex data, thereby facilitating knowledge-intensive tasks. An ongoing challenge is to select the appropriate technologies and combine them in a coherent system that brings measurable improvements to the users. We present our ongoing development of a semantic infrastructure in support of genomics-based lignocellulose research. Part of this effort is the automated curation of knowledge from information on fungal enzymes that is available in the literature and genome resources. Working closely with fungal biology researchers who manually curate the existing literature, we developed ontological natural language processing pipelines integrated in a Web-based interface to assist them in two main tasks: mining the literature for relevant knowledge, and at the same time providing rich and semantically linked information

Governing the Global Land Grab: Multipolarity, Ideas and Complexity in Transnational Governance

Since 2008, a series of new regulatory initiatives have emerged to address large-scale land grabs. These initiatives are occurring simultaneously at multiple levels of social organization instead of a single, overarching institutional site. A significant portion of this activity is taking place at the transnational level. We suggest that transnational land governance is indicative of emerging shifts in the practice of governance of global affairs. We analyze such shifts by asking two related questions: what does land grabbing tell us about developments in transnational governance, particularly with regard to North-South relations, and what do these developments in transnational governance mean for regulating land grabbing?Desde 2008, ha surgido una serie de nuevas iniciativas regulatorias para tratar acaparamientos de tierra a gran escala. Estas iniciativas están sucediendo simultáneamente a niveles múltiples de la organización social en vez de un lugar institucional predominante. Una porción importante de esta actividad está tomando lugar al nivel transnacional. Sugerimos que la gobernanza de tierras trasnacionales es indicativa de los cambios que están surgiendo en la práctica de gobernanza de los asuntos globales. Analizamos tales cambios haciendo dos preguntas relacionadas: ¿qué nos dice el acaparamiento de tierras sobre los desarrollos en la gobernanza trasnacional, particularmente con las relaciones norte-sur?, y ¿qué significan estos desarrollos en gobernanza trasnacional para regular el acaparamiento de tierras

Safe and just Earth system boundaries.

This is the final version. Available from Nature Research via the DOI in this record. Data availability The data supporting Figs. 2 and 3 are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22047263.v2 and https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20079200.v2, respectively. We rely on other published datasets for the climate boundary16, N boundary72 (model files are at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6395016), phosphorus73,74 (scenario breakdowns are at https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d9676f6b-abba-48fd-8d94-cc8c0dc546a2, and a summary of agricultural sustainability indicators is at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5234594), current N surpluses129,130 (the repository at https://dataportaal.pbl.nl/downloads/IMAGE/GNM) with the critical N surplus limit72 subtracted, and estimated subglobal P concentration in runoff based on estimated P load to freshwater131 and local runoff data132,133. Current functional integrity is calculated from the European Space Agency WorldCover 10-metre-resolution land cover map (https://esa-worldcover.org/en). The safe boundary and current state for groundwater are derived from the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (http://www2.csr.utexas.edu/grace/RL06_mascons.html) and the Global Land Data Assimilation System (https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datacollection/GLDAS_NOAH025_3H_2.1.html). More information is available in ‘Code availability’ and Supplementary Methods. Source data for Fig. 2 are provided with this paper.Code availability: The code used to produce Figs. 2 and 3 are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22047263.v2 and https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20079200.v2, respectively. The code used to make the nutrient Earth system boundary layers in Fig. 3 is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7636716. The code used to make the surface water layer in Fig. 3 and derive the subglobal Earth system boundaries for surface water is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7674802. The code to estimate current functional integrity is available at https://figshare.com/articles/software/integrity_analysis/22232749/2. The code to derive the groundwater layer in Fig. 3 and derive the total annual groundwater recharge is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7710540.The stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked1-3, yet their interdependencies are generally under-recognized; consequently, they are often treated independently4,5. Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, water and nutrient cycles, and aerosols at global and subglobal scales. We propose ESBs for maintaining the resilience and stability of the Earth system (safe ESBs) and minimizing exposure to significant harm to humans from Earth system change (a necessary but not sufficient condition for justice)4. The stricter of the safe or just boundaries sets the integrated safe and just ESB. Our findings show that justice considerations constrain the integrated ESBs more than safety considerations for climate and atmospheric aerosol loading. Seven of eight globally quantified safe and just ESBs and at least two regional safe and just ESBs in over half of global land area are already exceeded. We propose that our assessment provides a quantitative foundation for safeguarding the global commons for all people now and into the future.Stockholm Universit