Satellite Earth observation (EO) is considered an essential tool for the ‘Decade of Action’ towards the Sustainable Development Goals. While advocates claim that innovation in satellite EO will bring widespread environmental and societal benefits, satellite EO also raises significant epistemological and ethical challenges. This review examines the use of satellite EO for sustainable development, focusing on use cases related to renewable energy projects, smallholder agriculture programmes, disaster recovery, carbon accounting, water and ocean governance, and environmental activism. We explore the politics behind data capture, access, and use, recognising that satellite EO has ‘world-making’ effects. We find that satellite EO applications can generate unequal material impacts for people and the planet, while consolidating state or private control over natural resources. Yet, we also discuss how EO data can be collected and applied in locally led participatory ways to advocate for sustainability. Critical and reflexive dialogue is therefore needed to support policymakers, practitioners, and communities to realise the potential of satellite EO for just transformations in sustainability.
The concept of keystone species has been widely used to identify organisms with disproportionate ecological and cultural importance, yet less attention has been given to how such significance is continually produced through relational processes across scales. Here, we develop the concept of biocultural relational actors as an analytical framework for tracing how reciprocal relationships among humans and more-than-human beings unfold across social-ecological processes and scales through knowing, doing, and becoming. Drawing on the pewen (Araucaria araucana) and Mapuche Pewenche livelihoods in the southern Andes, we show how gathering, ecological observation, and territorial mobility connect organisms, communities, ecosystems, and institutions. By shifting analytical attention toward how relations are made and remade across scales, this perspective complements contemporary cultural keystone species approaches and offers pathways for understanding, governing, and stewarding social-ecological systems.
Humanity’s environmental footprint now reaches beyond ecosystems and into the molecular fabric of future generations. Experimental studies show that endocrine-disrupting chemicals, airborne pollutants, metals, dietary perturbations, and other environmental stressors can alter germ-cell genomic and epigenomic features, with some effects persisting across generations in animal models. In humans, however, evidence is strongest for exposure-associated germline alterations and intergenerational effects, whereas true transgenerational inheritance in generations without direct exposure remains insufficiently established. Despite these emerging insights, contemporary environmental governance remains anchored in short-term risk assessments and population-level metrics, providing limited consideration of potential effects on germline integrity and the health of future generations. This Perspective synthesizes advances from environmental health, epigenetics, toxicology, and sustainability science to highlight how present-day exposures constitute emerging dimensions of intergenerational environmental injustice. To address this gap, a Systems Framework for Germline Sustainability is proposed, structured around three mutually reinforcing pillars: Surveillance, Precaution, and Equity. The framework outlines actionable pathways for integrating germline integrity into regulatory regimes, sustainability indicators, and global health policies.
This perspective assesses scholarship to sharpen debate and discussion within the science of adaptation and hazard risk reduction. We are encouraged by the depth of scholarship incorporating diverse epistemologies and using place-based and participatory processes to co-create coastal climate resilience with impacted peoples. We do see the need, however, to focus theorizing on how power and (im)mobilities create adaptation inequities. We highlight recent scholarship demonstrating the co-constitutive nature of ‘community’ and ‘adaptation’ and how these interplay within the global political economy to create complex distributional impacts. We encourage deepening this line of inquiry to shift focus from normative parameters of so-called ‘transformative’ adaptation to better understanding the systems (e.g. neoliberal capitalism, neocolonialism, etc.) in need of transformation.
The growing prevalence of multiple hazards requires an improved understanding of people's perceptions and responses. In this review, we synthesize recent empirical studies of compound, cascading, and complex climate hazards to identify promising directions in the fields of behavioral science, disaster studies, and communication. We organize the review around three key areas of emerging research: studying how multiple hazards are perceived, how multiple hazards shape protective action, and how communication shapes response. We conclude by identifying gaps in research that support individuals and communities facing the reality of severe, compound climate hazards now and in the future.
