This article introduces the metric selection framework (MSF), developed as part of the CVORR+ methodology. CVORR+ is a systems-based evaluation toolkit designed to support complex sustainability assessment and decision-making. Within CVORR+, the MSF translates system analysis into decision-oriented, multidimensional metrics for monitoring, assessment, and evaluation of progress toward sustainability targets. Grounded in a value-focused decision-making approach, the framework combines expert elicitation with stakeholder engagement to ensure that metrics are system grounded, context specific, and practically relevant. Applied to England's plastic packaging system, the MSF reveals systemic inefficiencies, identifies leverage points for intervention, and informs policy design to support systemic value recovery. The case study demonstrates the heuristic and practical value of the MSF in capturing interdependencies across environmental, economic, social, and technical domains. Future developments will streamline the translation from system conceptualization to metric development, ensuring that metrics are responsive to long-term monitoring and policy-making, remain aligned with technological and regulatory shifts, and enhance the robustness and transferability of CVORR+.
Over the past two decades, scholars have reconceptualized extraction as ( a ) embedded within racial capitalism's systems of global, uneven accumulation and ( b ) a constitutive organizing principle of contemporary capitalism. Extractivism refers to contested discursive and material practices, governance technologies, and terrains of struggle rooted in racial capitalism which shape how people perceive and relate to the world. Extractive logics describes the ontological and epistemic structures through which extractivism renders differentiated subjects legible, governable, and exploitable. Extractive capitalism fosters dissent, consent, and acquiescence and by foregrounding the micropolitics of extractivism—labor, emotions, embodiment, endurance, care and domestic labor, and life-making practices—social scientists working differently within and across Marxist, Black, feminist, and Indigenous traditions show how people and more-than-human life inhabit and unsettle extractive logics. This review draws from transdisciplinary research in political economy-ecology that reinterprets slow dissent, refusal, and resurgence as world-making practices which reclaim time, land, emotion, and relationality against extractive capitalism.
Groundwater, a crucial freshwater source worldwide, is under threat of salinization due to the combined pressures of climate change and human activities, hindering sustainable development. This review explores both natural and anthropogenic sources and mechanisms of groundwater salinization (GWS). We describe the impacts of GWS on environmental and socioeconomic systems, highlighting the risks to agriculture, water quality, and public health. We also discuss monitoring and assessment techniques and knowledge gaps essential for effective management. We present successful case studies of interventions in seven countries, showcasing the feasibility and difficulty of effective management and mitigation strategies. Finally, we address sustainability challenges and outline future directions for research and policy, emphasizing the need for a paradigm shift from reactive management to proactive, holistic, and adaptive stewardship.
Gross domestic product (GDP) remains the dominant measure of economic progress, despite long-standing critiques including its failure to account for environmental sustainability, inequality, and social well-being. In the context of escalating climate breakdown and rising inequality, GDP is increasingly being recognized as an inadequate metric for national prosperity. This article reviews the growing movement toward alternative measures that prioritize sustainability, inclusion, and the well-being of humans and the rest of nature. Hundreds of alternatives exist, but recent research shows significant similarity among them, forming the basis for building a broad consensus. This review explores how academics and policy makers are responding to the limitations of standard national accounts and highlights broad public support for expanding economic indicators. This review also identifies the key barriers to be overcome in order to move beyond GDP—including vested interests, institutional buy-in, and the fragmentation of alternatives—and suggests strategies to address each. By examining these barriers and evaluating potential solutions within the current political landscape, this review contributes to the discourse on how national accounting systems can better evolve to reflect the goals of a just and sustainable economy embedded in society and the rest of nature.
Socioenvironmental research highlights the key role of communities and organizations in promoting sustainable and democratic energy systems. However, most of this emphasis has focused on modern industrialized societies. This article reviews research on energy alternatives conceptualized and practiced by movements and communities across the Global South. Based on the surveyed literature, we propose the concept of social energy futures (SEF) as an open-ended category to reflect on the drivers and features of these alternatives. As outlined, SEF are diverse and territorially situated, commonly encompassing three components: ( a ) they are largely needs-oriented, tending to prioritize use value over exchange value; ( b ) they involve broad political processes, defining how much energy should be harvested, through which technologies, by which actors, and for which purposes; and ( c ) they are part of broader identity struggles, reflecting how social actors actively organize to counteract colonial and corporate relations amid the energy and climate crisis. Taking these findings together, we propose an SEF analytical toolkit and outline future research themes to continue developing across diverse academic, cultural, and geographical settings.
