Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Studies
Beyond the prohibition list: redirecting negative subsidies into positive incentives could mitigate overfishing and protect coastal communities in WTO fisheries reform
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation
The World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies is a landmark in multilateral environmental governance, yet its current phase of negotiations on addressing subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing is contentious due to perceived welfare risks for small-scale fishers. In framing the debate around prohibiting subsidies, negotiators have thus far given little [...]
Positive outcomes and insights for scaling from a randomized pilot of a gear exchange program to reduce bycatch in small-scale fisheries
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Behavioral Economics, Environmental Studies, Marine Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Incentive-based conservation programs offer a promising approach for reducing fishing pressure on threatened species while supporting coastal livelihoods, yet causal evidence remains scarce. Modest budgets and small samples are a persistent challenge to evaluating pilots of novel conservation programs. We conducted a 12-month pre-registered randomized pilot of a gear exchange program in Aceh [...]
As invasions slow down, biosecurity must move inward
Published: 2026-09-22
Subjects: Animal Studies, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies
Rates of non-native-species first records and establishment are slowing. This is encouraging, but it changes rather than resolves the biosecurity problem imposed by biological invasions. As external establishments decline while national non-native-species pools remain compositionally distinct, a growing share of remaining invasion opportunity should lie in redistribution among connected [...]
Solar parks as an opportunity to jointly advance climate-change mitigation and biodiversity conservation
Published: 2026-09-21
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Nature and Society Relations
Anthropogenic climate change is among the most pressing challenges for humanity making carbon-neutral energy production a top priority. Across the globe, solar energy is the single fastest growing energy source with solar parks covering more and more land surface area across many continents. The rise in solar energy production affects terrestrial biodiversity in the areas now occupied by solar [...]
Climate change experience, knowledge and management goals shape native and non-native tree species choices among European foresters
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences
Assisted migration (AM) is increasingly considered in forest adaptation to climate change, yet its implementation depends on how forestry practitioners evaluate concrete planting options rather than on support for the concept alone. We surveyed 743 forestry practitioners and researchers across Europe, assessing planting preferences for 30 tree species differing in geographic origin, together with [...]
Biodiversity isn’t measured in tons: Making sense of nature in the context of sustainable agriculture
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies
In this review, we articulate several important, but often overlooked concepts, trends, and perspectives in the biodiversity monitoring space, specifically in the context of transforming agriculture and the wider food system. We describe the common approaches to biodiversity monitoring — those focused on species, communities, functions, habitats, etc — and the methods and tools commonly used to [...]
Comment on “China’s solar expansion policy reduces bird diversity”
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Environmental Studies
FROM CLIMATE AWARENESS TO CLIMATE-INFORMED PLANNING IN EXISTING MARINE PROTECTED AREAS
Published: 2026-08-26
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Studies, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Sustainability
Marine protected areas underpin global biodiversity commitments, but climate change challenges management systems built around historical conditions. Existing guidance defines climate adaptive practice, yet many plans contain resilience-supporting provisions without linking them explicitly to climate decisions. We present CliMPA, a human-centred framework that connects management needs, actor [...]
Biodiversity Externality Costs Through Supply Chain: A pass-Through Input-Output Framework for Biodiversity Financial Impact Assessment
Published: 2026-07-30
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Studies, Other Economics
Transition biodiversity risk is increasingly recognised as a source of financial risk, yet no framework exists to translate firm-level biodiversity impacts into credit risk metrics comparable to those developed for climate transition risk or even biodiversity dependency risk. This paper fills that gap by adapting the cost pass-through input-output methodology, established in the climate [...]
From Scalable Biodiversity Measurement to Credible Biodiversity Metrics
Published: 2026-07-09
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Business, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Economics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Statistical Models, Sustainability, Technology and Innovation
Governments struggle to develop effective policies to counter the decline of species and ecosystems. An obstacle to command-and-control and incentive-based mechanisms is that biodiversity is costly to measure, creating an information asymmetry in which firms and governments are incentivised to withhold information on adverse impacts. Using a principal-agent model, we show that credible reporting [...]
Technology should support, not sideline, locally driven conservation and restoration monitoring
Published: 2026-07-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies
The choice of how to monitor conservation and restoration is not solely technical - it shapes which outcomes are valued, whose priorities define success, where resources flow, and who benefits. The shift toward tech-based monitoring, driven by demand for scalable metrics, risks incomplete ecological understanding, sidelining Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) from data ownership and [...]
Advancing public pro-environmental action for global seagrass conservation
Published: 2026-06-12
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Studies, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Psychology, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences
Seagrass meadows support biodiversity, climate mitigation, and human well-being, yet remain threatened by interacting anthropogenic pressures. Public engagement is increasingly promoted in seagrass conservation, but the behaviours most relevant to reducing seagrass decline remain poorly defined. We surveyed 172 seagrass knowledge holders from 39 countries and territories, representing 1942 [...]
An action-oriented research agenda for equitable and meaningful nature-based solutions in urban areas
Published: 2026-06-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Studies, Public Health, Urban Studies and Planning
Nature-based solutions provide opportunities to address the urgent, interconnected global challenges of environmental conservation, public health, and social justice in urban areas. Despite growing interest among policy-makers, the outcomes of nature-based solutions at the nexus of biodiversity, human health, and social justice are not well understood. We gathered a group of experts from [...]
A Critical Year for Nature: Now is the time to accelerate action on the Global Biodiversity Framework
Published: 2026-05-21
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biodiversity, Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies
In October 2026, Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will convene for COP17 to review progress against the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) adopted in 2022. A global report provides a summary of collective progress, primarily drawing from government self-reporting at the halfway mark to 2030, the target year for taking urgent action to halt [...]
Nature finance: we need (some) offsets
Published: 2026-05-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Studies
Nature offsets – mechanisms that allow for negative environmental impacts (e.g. biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions) to be fully compensated for and neutralized – are extremely widespread, but have become increasingly controversial, to the extent they are now starting to be precluded from new environmental policy developments. In turn, leaders are becoming more reticent about their [...]