Irrigation relies on groundwater, but depletion threatens food supply, rural livelihoods, and ecosystems. Nature-based Solutions can potentially combat groundwater depletion, typically combining physical and natural infrastructure to benefit both people and nature. However, social infrastructure (e.g., rules and norms) is also needed but is under-studied for NbS used in agricultural groundwater management. Through a narrative review, we find that social infrastructure is infrequently described with an emphasis on using Nature-based Solutions to augment supply rather than manage demand.

Groundwater faces depletion worldwide, threatening irrigators who rely on it. Supply-side interventions to drill deeper or import water greater distances have not reduced this threat. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are increasingly promoted as leveraging natural infrastructure to reduce depletion. However, there is growing evidence that without social infrastructure (e.g., social norms, capacities and knowledge), NbS will reproduce the problems of technical approaches. How can social infrastructure be implemented within agricultural groundwater NbS to overcome groundwater depletion? Through a narrative review of the literature on agricultural groundwater NbS, we evaluate how social infrastructure has been implemented to (1) enable coordination, (2) monitor and manage change over time, and (3) achieve social fit. Our analysis covers diverse cases from around the world and various points in time, ranging from ancient civilizations to present-day. We conclude that social infrastructure is essential to effective agricultural groundwater NbS but understudied. We also propose further research on NbS designs that rely only on social and natural infrastructure by focusing on ecological fit between agricultural practices and their local environments.

A review of nature-based solutions for agricultural groundwater management finds that social infrastructure is key.

This article explores air pollution as a globally connected issue using the telecoupling lens, which links distant regions through environmental and human systems. It shows how pollution connects Africa and the Global North, demonstrating that actions in one place affect people and air quality elsewhere. Drawing on 90 research sources, it looks at how satellite data helps monitor air quality and finds that most studies focus on natural sciences, with limited input from social sciences and less frequently from African researchers. The authors highlight the need to close data gaps and call for more inclusive, cross-disciplinary, and international cooperation in air quality research. Overall, the study pushes for fairer, more connected approaches to understanding and tackling air pollution worldwide.

Air quality (AQ) is a transboundary phenomenon resulting from globalized interactions between coupled human and natural systems. Drawing on the telecoupling framework, this article argues that pollution flows, socioeconomic systems, and policy responses interconnect Africa with the Global North and identifies important data gaps for better understanding these interconnections. Through a meta-synthesis of 90 academic and gray literature sources, we analyze the use of satellite data for air quality monitoring, with a particular focus on interdisciplinary collaboration and African scientific participation. Our findings highlight a strong reliance on natural science approaches, limited integration of social science perspectives, and ongoing marginalization of African voices in shaping research agendas. We argue for a transformative research agenda rooted in interdisciplinary integration, inter-regional collaboration, and data justice. By adopting a telecoupled lens and prioritizing inclusive development, this study provides new pathways to understand, measure, and address air pollution as a global issue with deeply local consequences.

Air pollution links Africa & the Global North–study urges data justice & inclusive, global cooperation.

Several transnational corporations, investors, international organizations, and philanthropies have formed coalitions to respond to global social and environmental challenges. Do these coalitions, consisting of large-scale actors, have the capacity to contribute to the sustainability transformations that are needed, or do they perpetuate the same systemic dynamics that created the problems in the first place? We investigate this question by comparing publicly available information from five coalitions working on financial and food systems sustainability.

This paper examines whether large-scale actor coalitions (LSACs) may contribute to transformations toward equitable and sustainable futures. We use a ‘rapid assessment’ 20-variable framework to collect and analyze empirical data from five food and finance coalitions to identify their roles and capacities for transformative change. Our results indicate that LSACs implement distinct strategies to reach their goals. More specifically, due to their diverse set-ups, LSACs have the ability to raise awareness of sustainability issues, utilize ties to push forward agendas, engage in institutional policy-shaping processes, experiment with solutions, and showcase promising niche initiatives. We identify ways that LSACs’ actions can enable efforts of other change-makers who aim to change the food and finance systems and contribute to systems with high and diverse capacities for transformative change. We also discuss why the roles and lack of certain capacities of LSACs might hinder the creation of enabling conditions for transformative change within the food and finance sectors.

Coalitions consisting of powerful actors have a range of transformative capacities that, under certain conditions, can support systemic transformations within their sectors.

The world is facing multiple interconnected crises, from climate change and economic instability to social inequalities and geopolitical tensions. These crises do not occur in isolation; instead, they interact, reinforce each other, and create unexpected ripple effects – forming what is known as a polycrisis. Traditional ways of analysing problems often fail to grasp these interdependencies, making it difficult to find effective responses. We draw on system archetypes to describe and exemplify three polycrisis patterns. These provide a structured way to analyse how multiple crises unfold and interact, as well as insights into how to navigate such complexity.

The concept of a polycrisis describes the complex interconnections between global issues, which can lead to unexpected emergent behaviours and the possible convergence of undesirable impacts. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for anticipating compounded effects and for identifying leverage points for effective intervention. We propose that system archetypes – generic structures in system dynamics that capture recurring patterns of behaviour – can serve as a useful analytical tool to study polycrises. Specifically, we reinterpret three key system archetypes in this context: Converging Constraints (based on the Limits to Growth system archetype), Deepening Divides (based on Success to the Successful system archetype), and Crisis Deferral (drawing from the Policy Resistance system archetype). These patterns illustrate how resource limitations, structural inequalities, and short-term solutions can sustain or worsen crisis dynamics. Using real-world examples, we show how polycrisis patterns can be employed to map feedback structures between interacting crises and to guide effective interventions. Our work contributes to a more structured and systemic understanding of polycrises, by providing a tool to help researchers and policymakers better anticipate, navigate, and mitigate their effects.

‘Polycrisis patterns reveal how crises like climate change, economic instability, and inequality interact, amplifying their impacts’.

This study combines revolutionary theory with emerging polycrisis discourses to show how various international and national factors and events can become intertwined, creating polycrisis events that can lead to revolutionary moments. Revolutionary moments can further contribute to stresses that cause polycrisis or systemic dysfunction elsewhere, due to our entanglement of global systems. Through the help of two case studies, the Young Turk Revolution and the Arab Spring, this study highlights how revolutions emerge and how they can unfold in the future.

Revolutions – the overthrow or unseating of governmental forces through mass mobilization – have played a crucial role in major societal transformations throughout history (Lawson, 2019, Anatomies of revolution; Goldstone, 2014, Revolutions: A very short introduction). One component of revolutionary theory, past and present, are the ways different factors and forces interact to create revolutionary moments, specifically how international/transnational and internal societal events interconnect to generate revolutionary situations, trajectories, and outcomes. Revolutionary theorist George Lawson (2019) notes that global networks are intermeshed in that they can produce multiple, complex stressors and triggers that cause revolution in what he terms an ‘inter-social approach’. Building on these insights, we argue here through the case studies of the Young Turk Revolution and Arab Spring that the conceptualization of polycrisis as a causal entanglement of crises in multiple global systems provides a critical lens to understand revolutions.

In an age of polycrisis, risk of revolution increases. Explore how revolutions form and learn their future paths.

There is significant focus on the global polycrisis currently – and rightfully so, considering the threat to societies around the world that converging environmental, social, political, and economic challenges pose. However, little is said about what comes after the polycrisis. Are there methods to address the polycrisis in ways that would inherently help establish a ‘better’ post-polycrisis period (PPP) (i.e. preserving more of what sustains the many dimensions of human wellbeing while maintaining the integrity of the biosphere and local ecosystems)? This article explores that question, examining potential interventions that could lead to less suffering both during the polycrisis period and PPP.

This article explores how polycrisis interventions can be designed to be the most effective in setting up a better post-polycrisis outcome, while also improving the polycrisis response potential. It starts by setting up a 2 × 2 matrix to explore interventions that (1) improve outcomes during the polycrisis (but not the post-polycrisis period [PPP]), (2) improve outcomes post-polycrisis (but not during the polycrisis); (3) improve neither, and (4) improve both. The article explores some relevant and timely examples in each of the four quadrants, with particular focus on the quadrant in which interventions improve outcomes both for the polycrisis period and PPP. Particular attention is given, within that quadrant, to: reducing nuclear arsenals, population degrowth, economic degrowth, strengthening local agriculture, low-tech and appropriate technologies, and cultivating deeper respect for Gaia. In conclusion, the article recognizes that although it may be difficult, even impossible, to proactively and effectively plan for the PPP, some measures can be taken even now. Further, failing to put this on societal agendas means planning for and addressing long-term wellbeing will only occur by chance, increasing the odds of an extended period of crisis and/or a loss of key knowledge and civilizational advances gained.

Are there interventions to improve human and ecological wellbeing both in the polycrisis and the period that comes after?

Climate change is one of the most salient issues in current international politics. In all but the most optimistic of scenarios, it has the potential to severely impact human life in many parts of the world. Production and consumption patterns under the current liberal economic order contribute significantly to the climate crisis. Yet the norms and ideas that guide climate policy under this order are remarkably persistent in the face of climate change. This article explores why these norms have not yet been challenged, and how theories of international relations help understand the absence of such challenges.

Multilateral climate policy has institutionalized a set of norms that may be summarized as liberal environmentalism. Liberal environmentalism presumes that economic growth and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive, but prerequisites for each other, thereby connecting the economic order with environmental policy. This article argues that there is a distinct mismatch between the climate crisis and the stickiness of liberal environmentalism. Although the natural system to be governed is in crisis, the political and normative system tasked with governing it is not. The article thus inquires how crises come about by examining why they sometimes do not. It compares theoretical insights borrowed from liberal institutionalism, constructivism, and neo-realism and explores what may be missing from such approaches to fully grasp the nature of crises in international politics. The article finds that liberal environmentalist norms emerged in the 1990s, cascaded in the early 2000s and became institutionalized in the Copenhagen era, culminating in the Paris Agreement. They are likely to remain unaffected by the current polycrisis in international relations, because institutionalized norms are often resistant to change. Liberal environmentalist norms are now deeply embedded in contemporary climate governance, meaning that they can only be challenged through persistent norm entrepreneurship.

Liberal environmentalism persists in global climate policy because of institutionalized norms and the discursive reproduction of these norms.

The research paper studies business sophistication, tax revenue policies, and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) performance across 105 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries spanning from 2013 to 2021. Key insights from the study underscore a positive association between business sophistication and ESG performance. This suggests that organizations leveraging advanced knowledge and innovation are better positioned to implement effective ESG strategies. Moreover, higher tax revenue is linked to better ESG, underlining a commitment to sustainability within the business landscape. Notably, Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT) emerges as a pivotal catalyst in augmenting ESG performance, particularly when integrated with business sophistication and tax revenue mechanisms.

This study examines the relationship between business sophistication, tax revenue policies, and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) performance in 105 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries from 2013 to 2021, focusing on the moderating role of Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT). Using advanced econometric methods like Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS), two-step Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), and fixed-effect regression, the research also considers factors such as microfinance institutions, commercial bank financing, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings reveal a significant positive link between business sophistication and ESG performance, indicating that companies with advanced knowledge and innovation are more likely to implement successful ESG policies. Higher tax revenue is also positively correlated with ESG improvements, reflecting support for sustainability. ICT is crucial in enhancing ESG performance, especially when combined with business sophistication and tax revenue. Microfinance and commercial banking are vital in promoting ESG practices in BRI countries. Despite a temporary decline in ESG performance due to COVID-19, the study predicts a post-pandemic resurgence, emphasizing the need to foster an innovation culture for sustainable development.

There is a positive association between business sophistication, tax revenues, microfinance, ICT, and commercial banking, which are key drivers of better ESG performance in BRI countries.

At the heart of the polycrisis debate is the struggle to grapple with both the scientific and political uncertainties of the Anthropocene. The struggles over what to do about the polycrisis are thus found at the intersection of science and politics. We must approach the polycrisis as simultaneously a scientific and political challenge. To do so we propose that the polycrisis project adopts the methods of decision-making under deep uncertainty as a way to integrate and encourage collaborations between the scientific and policy worlds.

The polycrisis concept points to the interaction of multiple global crises and, arguably, to the difficulties in grasping the current moment with conceptual clarity. While Lawrence et al. emphasize the causal relations between crises in multiple global systems to define and operationalize the concept, we argue that they underestimate the politics of knowledge claims about the polycrisis, from the concept's performative function, from the normative claims it enacts or enables, and from the program of action that it carries or implies. We argue instead that at the heart of the polycrisis debate is the struggle to grapple with the (deep) uncertainties – both scientific and political – of the Anthropocene. Polycrisis is found operating at the intersection of science and politics where claims to scientific knowledge and political value, and scientific and political judgements, collide. Dealing with the uncertainties of the polycrisis is thus a matter of scientific methodological conundrum and a matter of political judgement and decision. We then propose that the polycrisis research program adopts decision-making under deep uncertainty methods to reach its objectives of improving policy outcomes, but also to better navigate what we call the uncertainty possibility space of the polycrisis.

The polycrisis is a struggle to grapple with the uncertainties of the Anthropocene which demands a new policy approach.

Advocates of the concept of polycrisis show that our world faces many interconnected risks that can compound and reinforce each other. Marxist critics, on the contrary, argue that polycrisis advocates have not yet given sufficient attention to the role of capitalism as a root cause of these intersecting crises. This paper agrees with these critics. But I also argue that it is possible to develop an alternative approach to polycrisis analysis rooted in the traditions of Marxism and neo-Gramscian theory. The paper applies this approach to analyze the European Union's ongoing polycrisis and sketch out its possible futures.

Advocates of the term polycrisis often claim that contemporary crises cannot be reduced to a single driver or dominant contradiction, forming instead a complex multiplicity of inter-systemic shocks. Marxist critics, on the contrary, claim that this approach, by framing contemporary crises as disparate and merely contingently connected, obscures the capitalist roots of contemporary crises. I agree with these critics to a point, though I argue that polycrisis thinking is needed to deepen Marxist analyses of the inter-systemic dynamics of contemporary crises and their possible futures. Polycrisis thinking needs Marxism to deepen its analysis of the political economy of polycrisis, whereas Marxism needs polycrisis thinking to enrich its understanding of the political opportunities and constraints that these intersecting crises may create for counter-hegemonic movements. To synthesize the insights of Marxism and polycrisis analysis, I develop an approach rooted in complexity theory and neo-Gramscian political economy. Using the European Union's (EU) ongoing polycrisis as an illustrative example, I show how neo-Gramscian polycrisis analysis can highlight the constraints that neoliberal hegemony places on the EU's efforts to manage its intersecting crises, while also informing counter-hegemonic struggles aiming to navigate toward more desirable futures in Europe's political possibility space.

This paper combines polycrisis thinking and Marxism to analyze the current polycrisis and possible futures of the European Union.

Transdisciplinary sustainability scientists work with many different actors in pursuit of change. In so doing they make choices about why and how to engage with different perspectives in their research. Reflexivity – active individual and collective critical reflection – is considered an important capacity for researchers to address the resulting ethical and practical challenges. We developed a framework for reflexivity as a transformative capacity in sustainability science through a critical systems approach, which helps make any decisions that influence which perspectives are included or excluded in research explicit. We suggest that transdisciplinary sustainability research can become more transformative by nurturing reflexivity.

Transdisciplinary sustainability science is increasingly applied to study transformative change. Yet, transdisciplinary research involves diverse actors who hold contrasting and sometimes conflicting perspectives and worldviews. Reflexivity is cited as a crucial capacity for navigating the resulting challenges, yet notions of reflexivity are often focused on individual researcher reflections that lack explicit links to the collective transdisciplinary research process and predominant modes of inquiry in the field. This gap presents the risk that reflexivity remains on the periphery of sustainability science and becomes ‘unreflexive’, as crucial dimensions are left unacknowledged. Our objective was to establish a framework for reflexivity as a transformative capacity in sustainability science through a critical systems approach. We developed and refined the framework through a rapid scoping review of literature on transdisciplinarity, transformation, and reflexivity, and reflection on a scenario study in the Red River Basin (US, Canada). The framework characterizes reflexivity as the capacity to nurture a dynamic, embedded, and collective process of self-scrutiny and mutual learning in service of transformative change, which manifests through interacting boundary processes – boundary delineation, interaction, and transformation. The case study reflection suggests how embedding this framework in research can expose boundary processes that block transformation and nurture more reflexive and transformative research.

Transdisciplinary sustainability research may become more transformative by nurturing reflexivity as a dynamic, embedded, and collective learning process.

We reviewed published research on natural hazards and community disaster resilience to identify how relationships between people and their experiences of disaster interact to shape possibilities for positive transformative change. Research commonly analyzes processes within and across individual and collective or structural spheres of a social system, but rarely investigates interactions across all three. We present a framework focused on ‘spheres of influence’ to address this. The Framework shows how positive relationships that prioritize restoring shared, meaningful and purposeful identities can lead to expansive and incremental capacity for transformative outcomes for sustainability: a process we liken to the butterfly effect.

Sustainability and disaster resilience frameworks commonly neglect the role of agentive social processes in influencing wider structural transformation for sustainability. We applied relational agency and social practice theory to conceptualize transformative pathways for enhanced sustainability through a review of peer-reviewed literature relating to natural hazards and community disaster resilience. We sought to answer two questions: 1. What are the social practices that influence transformative change for disaster resilience in the context of individual, collective and structural spheres of influence? 2. What are the social influencing processes involved, identified through relational agency? We found that empirical studies tend to focus on individual and collective or structural spheres but rarely offer a relational analysis across all three. Our findings highlight that positive relationships that prioritize restoring shared, meaningful and purposeful identities can act as a resource, which can lead to expansive and incremental transformative outcomes for sustainability: a process we liken to the butterfly effect. We present a Sphere of Influence Framework that highlights socialized practices influenced by relationality, which can be applied as a strategic planning tool to increase capacity for resilience. Future research should explore how socio-political practices (the structural sphere) influence distributed power within collective and individual spheres.

Disasters can generate extraordinary social dynamics. So, how can we optimize these dynamics for enhanced sustainability?