Urban biowaste valorization is a promising pathway for the circular bioeconomy, yet the business models supporting it remain fragile and poorly understood. Research has mainly emphasized product-oriented biomass valorization, while service-based models have received less attention. This paper examines how urban biowaste is integrated into value creation, delivery and capture mechanisms, and whether the product/service distinction captures their diversity. Based on an exploratory qualitative study of ten French initiatives, it identifies three business model families (product-oriented, service-oriented and hybrid) and seven types: value-added product transformation; biowaste trading; product valorization supporting a social mission; core paid waste-management services; ancillary biowaste services; community and non-profit waste services; and integrated product-service approaches. Product-oriented models mainly capture value through marketable outputs, service-oriented models through collection, logistics, regulatory compliance and stakeholder support, and hybrid models through both mechanisms. Across these families, biowaste also creates relational and marketing value through customer engagement and CSR narratives, and social and territorial value through inclusion, education, community building and local resource loops. Environmental value cuts across these mechanisms through waste diversion, resource substitution and reintegration into material, energy or agronomic cycles. The study shows that the product/service distinction is useful but insufficient and contributes a multidimensional typology. It also complements the biomass value pyramid with a business model perspective accounting for product, service, relational, marketing, social and territorial forms of value.
This article develops an epistemology of transformative science in the current context of accelerating socio-ecological crises. While sustainability discourses increasingly invoke “transformation,” mainstream scientific practices often remain grounded in an epistemology that reproduces the status quo. We argue that dominant interpretations of universality, objectivity, and neutrality function as exclusionary tropes that marginalize epistemic diversity, obscure the political entanglements of science, and privilege reductionist methodologies ill-suited to address complex socio-ecological problems. In response, we articulate an alternative epistemology of transformative science grounded in three principles: plurality, politicization, and holism. Plurality challenges the ideal of a unified science by embracing epistemic diversity and pluriversal approaches to knowledge co-production. Politicization rejects claims of value-free neutrality and foregrounds the power relations embedded in scientific institutions and sustainability governance. Holism counters reductionism by emphasizing interconnectedness, relationality, and systems thinking, including more-than-human relations central to many Indigenous worldviews. We articulate this framework through three complementary pathways: complexity-oriented science, participation-oriented science, and education-oriented science. Together, these pathways illustrate how epistemological reorientation can reshape the interface of science and society. Transformative science, we conclude, requires not only generating knowledge for sustainability transitions but reflexively transforming the epistemic foundations of scientific practice itself.
The High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy (the Ocean Panel) sits within a sea of initiatives aimed at transforming the way in which the world’s ocean is governed. Through a network of heads of state or government the Ocean Panel was formed to leverage its collective authority to improve ocean management domestically and globally. Drawing on expert interviews with the Ocean Panel creators and applying the multiple streams framework to policy development, we identify the critical role of policy and political entrepreneurs in enabling its rapid formation. The Ocean Panel attempts to utilise positional power and capacity through a club governance model, to influence national and international ocean policy. Akin to the G20, it is the role of the head of state or government that makes the Ocean Panel a significant development in multilateralism at a time of increased international volatility and uncertainty. In documenting the Ocean Panel’s formation and design characteristics, we identify the role of national leadership in setting the political and policy agenda for ocean governance across the globe.
The transition from fossil resources to biomass intensifies competition between food and non-food uses, necessitating cascading valorization to optimize organic waste utilization. This process, which layers complementary valorizations, requires systemic reorganization, particularly through strengthened linkages between agricultural, agro-industrial, and non-food industries. However, the governance and performance of these reorganizations vary across territories, shaped by material and immaterial resources. This study, drawing on Torre’s territorial development framework and Hirschman’s Exit, Loyalty, and Voice model, examines how stakeholder proximity relations influence cascading valorization projects as organizational and territorial innovations. Using the case of pomegranate by-product valorization in southern France, we conducted interviews with farmers, agri-food industries, non-food industries (cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, energy), and institutional actors, complemented by documentary analysis and a participatory workshop. Findings reveal that cascading valorization projects emerge through negotiations over resource control, investment distribution, and value creation. The process reshapes production systems by disrupting traditional upstream-downstream relationships. This transformation occurs within a tension between two models of circular bioeconomy: a territorial model, driven by local actors aiming to integrate valorization within the region, and a productivist model, led by industrial players seeking efficiency and scalability, often at the expense of local anchoring. Ensuring that cascading valorization benefits local development requires support mechanisms tailored to territorial characteristics. Without adapted governance frameworks, circular bioeconomy initiatives risk being co-opted by dominant players, limiting their capacity to foster sustainable territorial transformations.
Urban soils have become increasingly important for landscape and urban planning as community involvement in green space management gains prominence, yet the ways cultural diversity shapes perceptions and management of urban soils remain poorly understood. This paper consolidates urban ethnopedology (UE) into an explicit framework for analyzing how different social groups conceptualize, classify, and manage urban soils, and for integrating this experiential knowledge into environmental policy and planning. The proposal builds on existing work in critical physical geography, urban political ecology, and science and technology studies, and identifies three structural obstacles, i.e., ontological, demographic, and regulatory, that have kept community soil knowledge outside urban environmental governance. Urban ethnopedology links scattered evidence from urban agriculture, immigrant gardening, traditional ecological knowledge, community forestry, and citizen science to show that culturally based soil management practices generate systematic differences in soil quality that are largely invisible to the classification systems and regulatory thresholds on which current urban soil policies and management plans rest. Building on this, the paper proposes a four-step framework that combines ethnographic methods with field-based soil science: i) ethnographic observation and engagement, ii) systematic documentation of knowledge systems, iii) soil investigation informed by practitioner insights, and iv) collaborative interpretation with community and municipal actors. Framing urban soils as socio-ecological systems co-produced by biophysical processes and cultural practices, UE highlights how existing planning paradigms sideline the expertise of residents who already steward urban soils. The perspective argues that recognizing and mobilizing this expertise has direct implications for urban greening strategies, environmental justice objectives, and the design of more inclusive and effective soil management policies.
This article presents a systematic literature review of science–policy interfaces (SPIs) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), examining how these processes are addressed conceptually and methodologically in the regional academic literature. Based on 61 peer-reviewed articles published between 2014 and 2024, the study applies the SPI framework of Sarkki et al. (2015) to classify cases along five dimensions: structures, objectives, dynamics, outputs and outcomes, and governance context. The analysis shows that SPIs in LAC operate predominantly through informal, flexible, and project-based arrangements, more often initiated by the scientific community than by public agencies, and oriented toward evidence-informed policymaking. Intermediation emerges as the weakest link: outside a small set of consolidated boundary organizations, mediation typically depends on isolated individuals or ad hoc arrangements. Diverse knowledge integration remains uneven, with persistent epistemic asymmetries. Cross-country comparison reveals shared vulnerabilities to administrative turnover and political cycles across Mexico, Brazil, and Chile, even where institutional density is higher. Together, these findings characterize a regional mode of interfacing that is adaptive and participatory in its dynamics but structurally fragile and highly sensitive to political cycles. This pattern suggests that dominant SPI frameworks, largely built on assumptions of institutionalized boundary organizations and stable policy cycles, need to be adjusted to account for interfacing sustained by individuals, short-term projects, and informal networks, as LAC evidence shows. Strengthening intraregional comparative research could thus both advance evidence-informed decision-making in LAC and contribute analytical resources for SPI scholarship in other settings where adaptive, project-based configurations prevail.
As ground-mounted solar parks increasingly compete with agricultural land use, dual land-use innovations such as agrivoltaics have emerged as a potentially transformative response — yet their adoption depends critically on how citizens evaluate them. This study examines how citizens in Denmark evaluate agrivoltaic systems compared to conventional solar parks, with particular attention to the interaction of cognitive and affective reasoning. Using immersive Virtual Reality (VR), 102 participants experienced three photovoltaic configurations—a conventional solar park, a vertical agrivoltaic system, and a horizontal agrivoltaic system—within a standardized agricultural landscape. Employing a mixed-methods design combining real-time verbal protocols and survey measures, the study shows that evaluations were not fixed but developed through ongoing sensemaking as visual and functional characteristics became legible. Initial impression-based responses related to aesthetics and landscape fit were frequently reconsidered once the dual-use logic of agrivoltaics was understood. Following experiential engagement, agrivoltaics were evaluated as greener, more innovative, and at least as acceptable locally as conventional solar parks, with vertical designs also receiving higher visual liking ratings. These findings show that experiential engagement can shift public evaluations from trade-off to synergy framings through cognitive-affective reappraisal, and that immersive visualization tools hold practical potential for early-stage governance and communication of emerging dual land-use technologies.
The Arctic is changing faster than any other region on Earth, prompting an urgent need for resilient and widespread monitoring to inform adaptation and decision-making at local to international scales. Scientific knowledge for assessing and predicting the impacts of environmental change lacks both temporal and spatial coverage. Environmental community-based monitoring (CBM) offers a promising solution, providing the potential for high-quality data throughout the year over critical Arctic regions, while supporting self-determination in research by the communities most affected. Drawing from experience-based learning from Arctic environmental research programs and explicitly addressing the current imbalance in the control and provision of Arctic research, we propose a phased approach to transitioning from externally led to more autonomous, community-based research (CBR) approaches. Sustainable and usable Arctic research outcomes depend on both external innovation and appropriate levels of community engagement, specific to each program’s goals, available infrastructure and resources. Achieving steady progress at each phase of community engagement requires policies that establish a solid foundation of support systems, research infrastructure and clearly defined, well-funded leadership and administrative roles. We emphasise the importance of transformative training to support essential CBR roles, enabling equitable program development and sustainable environmental work that yields actionable research outcomes aligned with community priorities over time, across various scales, regardless of the research approach employed. This approach can provide a blueprint to inform the research processes and practices of the International Polar Year 2032–2033 (IPY–5), ensuring that scientific needs are addressed through more inclusive, equitable and sustainable Arctic research processes.
Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the international climate regime has shifted from a top-down to a polycentric approach, with climate targets now primarily formulated at the national level. In this context, experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have gained increased resonance and policy relevance, achieving a more prominent place than before. While policy studies have traditionally focused on conceptualizing the roles of international experts in international arenas through generic ideal types such as elites, brokers, or advocates, scant attention has been given to the diverse profiles and dissemination practices of international experts within their domestic policy contexts. Building on previous work on different ideal types of scientific experts, this article introduces a new typology of configurations of international expertise dissemination that outlines six ideal types of passeurs involved in intergovernmental panels. These ideal types are categorized according to the professional affiliations of the experts, their roles played in institutionalized science-policy interfaces, and the political audiences they engage with. This typology facilitates the understanding and comparison of all dissemination strategies employed by the experts domestically. Using qualitative methods, this new typology is illustrated in two case studies of IPCC experts involved in the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6): the French and the Argentinian IPCC experts. This typology offers a valuable tool for analyzing and comparing all possible national arrangements for disseminating expertise emanating from scientific panels or similar expert groups.
Chemical regulation depends on scientific evidence, yet many widely used chemicals remain poorly studied. The production of this evidence is shaped by institutional incentives governing academic research and industry compliance with regulatory requirements, leading some substances to be repeatedly examined while others receive little attention. We present a conceptual framework showing how academic and industry incentives shape both which chemicals are studied and when evidence emerges. This sequential production of knowledge creates persistent blind spots and allows early producer-generated studies to influence regulatory trajectories before independent scrutiny develops. Regulatory delay, therefore, reflects not only fragmented evidence but also the timing of its emergence. Improving chemical governance requires attention to how evidence is produced and when decision-relevant knowledge becomes available.
Addressing complex environmental challenges requires collaboration across different knowledge holders to scope and articulate relevant local issues, co-create a shared knowledge base for action, and broaden the range of solutions considered. Using the case of sustainable municipal development in the Norwegian Arctic, I elicited residents’ potentially actionable Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK) relevant to spatial planning and on par with knowledge routinely mobilized by municipalities through institutionalized expertise. Municipal planning is a complex process. The selection of construction sites can have significant consequences for the environment, the climate, and future generations. Based on interviews with 75 residents, I empirically contribute salient examples of potentially actionable ILK and assess how people appraise their own and others’ knowledge. The results show that residents hold a diverse range of valuable ILK, relevant to sustainable municipal planning. Decision-makers and ILK-holders currently underappreciate the value of ILK. This is due to the implicit assumption that institutionalized expertise has no blind spots, the challenge of assessing ILK, and the questionable assumption that validation of ILK requires statistical confirmation. This hints at an internalized dimension of epistemic marginalization produced by the presently dominant civic epistemology. I propose a new concept, epistemic literacy for sustainable development, that aims to empower ILK-holders to value and share their knowledge. Such literacy is necessary for collaboration across different ways of knowing to advance common sustainability goals. I propose a practical four-step approach to foster epistemic literacy and help municipalities harness the untapped potential of ILK for sustainable local development.
The transformation towards sustainable food systems requires the collaboration of scientific and non-scientific stakeholders through transdisciplinary research at local and regional levels. Participatory modeling (PM) is a transdisciplinary approach to involve stakeholders in modeling. We mapped for the first time its use in participatory agri-environmental research and discuss its particular value for transdisciplinary research. We reviewed 78 peer-reviewed case studies to map the use of 19 different forms of PM (e.g., system dynamics, companion modeling) for ten study goals (e.g., understanding systems, improving policies, social learning). We assessed stakeholder participation levels and described case studies for each goal. We found that individual forms of PM were often used in combination, and that relationships exist between specific forms of PM and study goals. Stakeholder participation levels depended on several factors, e.g., the used form(s) of PM or the existence of prior relationships. Many forms of PM were rarely used (e.g., social network analysis) while a small number of forms dominated (e.g., agent-based modeling, system dynamics). Researchers controlled most studies, but some remarkably stakeholder-engaging ones stood out and were examined more closely. We stress the need to systematically evaluate the success and impact of PM, to foster a wider use in agri-environmental research, including its use in newly developing research and innovation approaches, such as living labs. Its full potential is not yet exploited. Our findings will also help researchers to expand their methodological skillset, and to define their scientific interdisciplinary approaches in transdisciplinary processes in a more methodically targeted way.
Environmental risks threaten human capital accumulation worldwide, yet no synthesis has examined how the full range of environmental hazards affects human capital across its four core dimensions: health and well-being, education, employment, and economic growth. This narrative review addresses that gap. Drawing on environmental epidemiology, health economics, and development science, we trace the pathways through which air and water pollution, lead exposure, soil degradation, the built environment, natural disasters, and climate change erode human capital. We map each risk onto the components of the World Bank Human Capital Index: child survival, expected years of schooling, quality-adjusted learning, adult survival, and stunting. We also examine the reverse direction and identify three mechanisms through which human capital investment improves environmental quality: a behavioral mechanism operating through awareness and demand for regulation, a technological mechanism through the capacity to adopt cleaner production, and an adaptive mechanism through resilience to hazards. The burden falls disproportionately on low- and middle-income countries, where 92% of deaths from all forms of pollution occur, and the World Bank estimates the global health cost of ambient fine particulate pollution at $5.7 trillion in 2016, equivalent to 4.8% of global GDP. We conclude that environmental protection should be treated as a core component of human capital investment strategy, while noting that the effectiveness of individual policy instruments depends on monitoring capacity, enforcement, and institutional readiness. The review offers an integrated framework for policymakers and researchers addressing environmental risk and human capital as a single, interconnected challenge.
Traditional waste management systems often necessitate trade-offs between environmental and economic objectives when designing municipal solid waste (MSW) treatment infrastructure. While effective food waste (FW) utilization is critical for advancing circular economy (CE) principles, single-process assessments typically reveal conflicts between environmental benefits and economic constraints. Taking Shenzhen as a case study, this research challenges this conventional perspective by developing an integrated life-cycle analysis framework to evaluate system-wide impacts of separate FW utilization. The analysis demonstrates that FW segregation and valorization generate synergistic effects when accounting for interdependencies among treatment technologies. The overall energy recovery of the MSW treatment system was enhanced, maximumly reducing global warming potential by 116.6 kg CO2 eq/t and LCC by 44.3 CNY/t. Correlation analysis between environmental and economic performance identified two fundamental strategies to improve system-wide performance as minimizing direct emissions and maximizing energy recovery. Sensitivity results further emphasize the inextricable linkage between source reduction and terminal resource utilization, underscoring the necessity of integrated system design. Municipal authorities should prioritize integrated governance and cross-departmental coordination to unify environmental, economic, and social objectives in waste management, while robust economic incentives, enhanced market confidence and active public participation are essential to accelerate CE transitions.
Construction and Demolition (C&D) waste is the largest solid waste stream in France, yet circular economy (CE) research on this sector tends to privilege technical and quantitative framings over its socio-economic and governance dimensions. This article examines the implementation of CE measures in the gravel-quarrying industry of the Basse-Ariège plain (Occitanie, France), where alluvial aggregates are extracted from the water table and the resulting pits are backfilled with C&D waste legally classified as "inert." Drawing on Discard Studies and territorial political ecology, and building on a two-year interdisciplinary and participatory research project (NAPALAIR) combining documentary analysis, 53 semi-structured interviews, and participatory workshops with residents, farmers, quarry operators, and public authorities, we ask who gains and who pays from CE implementation. Our results show that extraction and disposal are structurally coupled through a profitable "double freight" logistics arrangement, and that backfilling is classified as "recovery" through a permissive legal and regulatory regime shaped largely by industry actors themselves. We further show that current leaching standards fail to capture how submersion in groundwater may alter the degradation kinetics of supposedly inert materials. Rather than curbing extraction, CE targets make quarrying more economically viable, producing what we term a double penalty for the host territory: fertile agricultural land is lost to extraction, then exposed to long-term contamination risk from buried waste, while local municipalities receive only marginal economic benefits. We argue that this extraction-discard coupling is not unique to Ariège, offering scope conditions relevant to CE-driven extractivism in comparable resource-rich, waste receiving territories.
Forest restoration and tree planting are increasingly being perceived as a remedy to climate change, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, poor soil quality, joblessness and numerous other global challenges. Yet challenges related to governance - such as who takes the decisions to plant which trees and where, who the rightsholders are, and who benefits in the long term - are often ignored, with a direct impact on restoration results. Consequently, actors seek to implement governance-related solutions - such as improving tenure security and enacting enabling policies - to facilitate forest restoration. We review the global, English-language scientific literature (1995–2025) in order to identify and categorise these governance challenges and solutions with a view to improving knowledge, practice, and success in forest restoration. We identify a range of governance challenges that forest restoration projects or programmes should assess across spatial scales, with tenure issues being the most frequently cited challenges. We also offer a menu of governance solutions, with collaborative approaches and economic incentives topping the list, providing powerful triggers for forest restoration. We conclude with four recommendations - two for researchers and two for practitioners - that can contribute to better outcomes in forest restoration programmes.
Forest restoration has become a key global environmental policy objective, underscoring the need for cost-effective approaches capable of operating at large scales. In this context, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly seen as a disruptive tool for forest restoration, offering new opportunities to enhance precision, efficiency, and scalability. However, its application entails substantial technical challenges, including uneven and incomplete data availability across regions, which often leads to simplified representations of ecosystem dynamics. Beyond these, governance-related risks, such as limited transparency of models, high entry costs, capacity barriers, and persistent power imbalances, may undermine both the effectiveness and legitimacy of outcomes. Here, we argue that the effectiveness of AI applications in restoration ultimately hinges on governance systems capable of addressing these challenges and delivering equitable benefit-sharing. To this end, we propose development of a governance framework built on three pillars: (1) participatory knowledge integration, embedding plural knowledge systems into AI design and use; (2) multi-scalar policy alignment, linking international commitments with national and local priorities; and (3) polycentric governance, promoting distributed stewardship and access to innovation across multiple centers of authority. This framework provides a basis for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to critically assess and guide AI applications in forest restoration efforts.
