The policy recognition that peace and sustainability are intrinsically linked has led to increased scholarly attention on their nexus. In this systematic review, we focus on the indicators of positive peace and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to provide a fine-grained analysis of their co-benefits, trade-offs, and mediating factors. The literature landscape shows an increasing conceptual integration of environmental, social, and economic issues, with the SDGs serving as the central organizing paradigm. Our content analysis also reveals that positive peace acts as the mediating factor, enabling the conditions or moderating the inadvertent consequences of sustainable development. In this age of multiple, interconnected, and fast-moving crises, advancing our understanding of the peace–sustainability nexus becomes more pressing than ever. This comprehensive assessment of the pathways between positive peace and sustainable development presents a synthesis of the dominant themes and identifies the knowledge gaps in the literature, thereby informing future research and policy directions.

Pollination is a key ecological function that ensures plant reproductive success and has important implications at multiple levels of biological organization. Animal pollination emerged 280 million years ago and promoted the diversification of angiosperms and pollinators. Currently, 90% of flowering plant species, including most crops, require animals to maximize their reproduction. However, human-induced rapid environmental change is threatening these mutualistic interactions. Pressures such as land use and climate change are modifying the probability of interaction between plants and pollinators as they impact species abundances, timing, and space use. Moreover, the interaction efficiency itself is also modified when pollen deposition quantity and quality are affected. Yet, we still have a limited understanding of the consequences of these changes for plant reproduction and when pollen limitation occurs. Combining the impact of multiple pressures with a mechanistic knowledge of the pollination function should guide future efforts to conserve animal pollination.

The concepts of energy justice, energy poverty, and energy equity have gained considerable recognition over the past decade. It is now understood that energy transition processes and activities, despite evident benefits, can lead to injustices. However, these downsides often remain unaddressed. This article aims to fix this shortcoming by reviewing how the energy transition can impact vulnerable populations. While it is important to recognize that the transition can positively impact vulnerable groups, this article focuses on the negative impacts to identify vulnerabilities. In addition to providing a historical overview, we present the state of the art on energy justice and vulnerability before describing different populations that are vulnerable to the energy transition. We then list measures to alleviate the negative impacts and help achieve a just transition. The article concludes with a discussion of the current knowledge gaps on the topic of a just transition for vulnerable populations.

Systems such as energy, food, and mobility are currently organized in unsustainable modes of production and consumption, with negative consequences on social justice and planetary health. Disruptive and systemic innovations are required, beyond solely improving technologies or financial instruments, to address wicked and complex societal and environmental challenges. Transformative innovation policy (TIP) is a new generation of innovation policy that promises to enable just transitions in these socio-technical systems. The promise is to be able to tackle wicked problems and polycrisis of inequities, social injustices, environmental degradations, and accelerated impacts of climate change through new policymaking approaches that support, nurture, and scale transformative socio-technical innovations. We review emerging TIP literature to discuss key elements in TIP design and implementation, such as experiment, monitoring, and learning through formative evaluation; codesigning a systemic theory of change; enhancing policy capabilities; building knowledge infrastructure; and empowering communities of practice. Two cases in Spain and Indonesia illustrate key aspects of the TIP method. Our major contribution lies in articulating what an alternative innovation policy could look like to mitigate transformational failures observed in current system change efforts and explore how directionalities such as being democratic, elevating decolonial sensibilities, enhancing well-being, and navigating futures can make innovation policies more transformative. Policymakers must adopt new ways of thinking and acting on persistent challenges, beyond the traditional way of setting social and climate targets at the beginning of policy process and a summative policy evaluation at the very end. TIPs of the future should incorporate multiple directionalities negotiated among diverse actors and knowledge systems and by learning from failure in context-sensitive ways.

Expanding demand for precious, rare earth, and other minerals has reinvigorated interest in mining the deep abyssal seafloor for polymetallic (manganese or ferromanganese) nodules, hydrothermal vents for polymetallic sulfides, and seamounts for cobalt-rich crusts, raising questions regarding the environmental sustainability of such activities. In this review, we consider the current state of knowledge regarding mining and its potential impacts and conclude that the limited and variable observations currently available point to a clear need for further study prior to launching commercial mining in any of these habitats. To this end, we identify critical gaps that limit our ability to predict long-term mining impacts as well as potential strategies to address those gaps.

The core insight of Planetary Health is that the Earth crisis is fueling a global health crisis. Planetary Health examines the links between human health and Earth's natural systems. This review outlines key drivers of environmental degradation and how they lead to global environmental change, which is marked by the transgression of six Planetary Boundaries and causes severe health impacts such as malnutrition and the spread of diseases, with increased risks for vulnerable populations. The concept of Earth system justice highlights the need for just solutions to address inequities within and between generations. The review discusses actions like sustainable food and energy systems, circular economies, governance changes, and collaboration across sectors. It also emphasizes the importance of Indigenous knowledges and building resilience for vulnerable populations. Aligning human well-being with the health of natural systems is necessary to address current challenges and ensure a livable future for all.

The term polycrisis has gained prominence, capturing the interconnected nature of global challenges such as climate change, pandemics, conflicts, and economic instability. Originating in the 1960s, the concept now reflects the growing complexity and interactions among global crises. In this article, we conduct a two-step systematic review of the definitions, components, drivers, and interventions of the polycrisis. After scanning 2,299 publications, we analyzed 59. Coding for definitions and descriptions, we clustered crises, drivers, and interventions. Results indicate a common understanding of the polycrisis as multiple co-occurring, causally entangled crises with synergistic and cascading effects on multiple systems degrading humanity's prospects . While crises such as climate change, the human health crisis, and inequality are frequently mentioned, their interactions remain underexplored. Drivers often stem from systemic societal and economic factors, and the proposed interventions emphasize a need for transformational change. Future research should explore causal pathways, identify vulnerabilities, review interventions, and harmonize knowledge systems for action.

Increasing temperature-related hazards require a collective effort to assess and enhance the thermal resilience of buildings and communities to protect occupants’ safety and minimize property or infrastructure damage. However, limited coordination across stakeholders and lack of standardized procedures for resilience assessment undermine the effectiveness of extreme temperature mitigation and adaptation strategies across the building life cycle. This review examines the current literature on resilience metrics to address thermal stress and risk due to extreme indoor environments. Stakeholders of thermal resilience include architects and engineers, occupants, property owners, real estate developers, urban planners, and policymakers. Additionally, motivations for measuring thermal resilience are emphasized, such as safeguarding occupant health and survivability, protecting property, and ensuring business continuity during extreme weather events. This review provides actionable insights and identifies future research needs for enhancing resilience through tailored metrics for stakeholders during the planning, design, construction, operation, and retrofitting phases of buildings and communities.

Limited progress with mitigation makes it almost inevitable that global warming of 1.5°C will be exceeded. This realization confronts Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with a choice either to stabilize warming above but as close as possible to 1.5°C or to reverse global warming back to this level. We review core concepts and current knowledge relating to overshoot: an exceedance and subsequent decline back below a specified global warming level. We clarify the concept and origins of overshoot in science and climate policy, discuss the key drivers of climate-related risks and how they might evolve under overshoot trajectories to foster more systematic research into those risks, and consider the role of adaptation. We then consider the feasibility of overshoot in terms of mitigation across the six feasibility dimensions introduced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its sixth Assessment Report. We conclude by discussing critical barriers, challenges, and knowledge gaps related to overshoot.

Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are emitted to the environment via various pathways. Consequently, there are concerns over the potential impacts of APIs in the environment on ecological and human health. This review provides an overview of what we know about pharmaceuticals in the environment and how impacts can be managed. Pharmaceuticals can be emitted into the environment at all stages in the product life cycle, resulting in their widespread detection across different environmental matrices around the globe, and in tissues of exposed organisms. Due to their biologically active nature, APIs have the potential to adversely affect organisms in the environment, and risk assessment studies have shown that concentrations of APIs in the environment in many regions are at levels of concern for direct ecotoxicological effects. There are also concerns over indirect effects on human health through the selection of antimicrobial resistance in the environment by antibiotic substances. Current practices are not sufficient to curb the release of APIs to the environment and their impacts. Looking forward, there is a need to implement sustainable management practices to tackle this issue, with cross-sectoral cooperation being key to effectively address the problem. This includes solutions ranging from enhanced global environmental monitoring and utilization of advancements in artificial intelligence to green chemistry and eco-directed prescribing.