REDD+ (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) was introduced as a key policy measure to mitigate global climate change in tropical forests. REDD+ is framed as an incentive-driven payment for ecosystem services (PES) programmes for carbon sequestration and storage. REDD+ is also performance-based and demands substantial institutional change. Implementing REDD+ implies engaging and confronting several interests, creating complex and wicked problems for policy-makers. This chapter analyzes REDD+ in Kilosa, Tanzania; the ‘Bolsa Floresta’ project in the State of Amazonas, Brazil; and in the Bikoro, Equateur Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Forests are important to livelihoods in each of these contexts, but they vary in power structure and history. These variations aside, the three cases offer an opportunity to learn about the challenges REDD+ has encountered ‘on the ground’.

This chapter presents Sustainability Solution Spaces for Decision-Making (SSP) as an integrative method for assessing sustainability. The SSP represents the room to manoeuvre in the system at hand so that it can develop sustainably. The approach fulfils (1) systemic criteria; (2) normative criteria; and (3) procedural criteria. It provides a consistent set of targets and considers the systemic relations among the indicators representing the city-region. This gives the decision-makers concise guidelines for sustainable decisions and makes them aware of the associated trade-offs. SSP can be pursued following a participatory and an expert approach. Whereas the expert approach requires high quality of data, preferably either over time or over a large number of cities, the participatory approach is more flexible and can deal with qualitative data. That is, the expert approach is appropriate for comparing large sets of cities with each other, clustering and providing benchmarks for specific city types, and delivering general indications where policy development is required. The participatory approach might be particularly useful for assessing the impact of a specific project or analysing a specific sector, such as mobility or housing, in depth.

Landscapes are defined as ‘an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors’ (Council of Europe, 2000). Cultural landscapes are defined by the UNESCO World Heritage Convention (1992) as distinct geographical areas or properties uniquely ‘represent[ing] the combined work of nature and of man’. It also describes cultural landscapes as a ‘diversity of manifestations of the interaction between humankind and its natural environment’, and that the protection of traditional cultural landscapes can contribute to maintaining biological diversity. Indeed, Pilgrim and Pretty (2010) propose that the resilience of ecocultural systems is at its strongest when biological and cultural diversity can be considered as an interdependent whole.

Chapter 1 – How do we change the world? – presents the rationale of the book, its aim, and scope, introduces key concepts and outlines the state of research on and for transformations toward sustainability. The chapter highlights different calls for sustainability transformations in the United Nations 2030 Agenda, countries’ contributions to the Paris Agreement and subsequent negotiations within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The chapter further discusses the difference between the concepts of transformation and transition. The chapter argues that greater conceptual clarity on sustainability transformations across societies in the world facilitates decision-making and planning in form of democratization, organizational effectiveness and international cooperation.

Are conventional farming systems sustainable? Their impact on climate, global chemical pollution, human health, wildlife extinction and collapse of agro-ecosystems. Novel approaches to farming and food production.

Energy policy making is complex, and policy makers have traditionally relied on evidence and assessments dominated by a handful of disciplines from the natural and physical sciences. These assessments have often focused on technological solutions with the implicit message that the answer to policy needs lies in identifying and developing the right technology. Historically, however, problems arise in the implementation process of new technologies. These obstacles may be better understood, and either alleviated or avoided, through a more holistic analysis of energy policy requirements that includes multidisciplinary approaches from the social sciences and humanities. This chapter introduces the main ideas of the book, including an overview of each chapter and the most important arguments of the book.

Greenhouse gas emissions abatement, negative emissions technologies, and adaptation are not, and most likely will not, be enough to prevent dangerous climate change and its deleterious impacts on humans, other species, and ecosystems. Some scientists and others are increasingly considering and researching solar geoengineering, which would reflect or block some of the sun's incoming solar radiation, as a potential complementary response. This introductory chapter offers an initial explanation of climate change and solar geoengineering, including its leading proposed techniques of stratospheric aerosol injection, marine cloud brightening, and cirrus cloud thinning. Solar geoengineering should be taken seriously, as its governance is both important and challenging. Among the major challenges is that solar geoengineering presents a high-stakes risk-risk tradeoff under conditions of great uncertainty. Another is that although earlier governance can be more effective, little is then known of such an emerging technology’s salient characteristics. The chapter outlines the topics covered by the remainder of the book and makes the author’s prior assumptions explicit.

This chapter describes the prospects for reducing the impact of aviation on the environment through operational changes, new airframe and engine technologies, and biofuels. The focus is on the in-flight impact on the environment with particular emphasis on climate change impact. Examples of operational changes include optimized profile descents, reduced vertical separation, multistage long-distance travel, formation flight, and large aircraft for short ranges. New airframe technologies described include active laminar flow control and novel aircraft configurations such as the double bubble and the blended wing-body. Various possible approaches to improve the efficiency of jet engines are described as well as means of reducing nitrogen oxide emissions, such as lean premixed combustion. Prospects for large-scale use of biofuels are discussed and the technical path that should be taken in developing and adopting alternative jet fuels is presented.