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Defining ‘science-based targets’

Setting targets for addressing major planetary concerns is an essential prerequisite for concerted global action (both inside and outside multilateral environmental agreements) and is necessarily a societal and political process, requiring negotiation and convergence among oftenconflicting interests. There is no such thing as a ‘scientific target’ applied in policy or business—operational targets are socio-political choices. However, this is not to say that targets cannot be ‘science-based’.

'Overwhelming' international support for more government action on environment, message-testing experiment finds. Credit - Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
'Overwhelming' international support for more government action on environment, message-testing experiment finds
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With eight months to go before the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), an international survey experiment has found evidence of "overwhelming" support across seven major countries for governments to "do more" to protect the environment.

Navigating transformation of biodiversity and climate

This planet is the home of life, born into existence and transformed over 3.8 billion years into a continuous tapestry, covering all possible places from the deep ocean floors to mountain summits. Ours is a bioclimatic world in which every organism, from bacterium to blue whale, inseparably contributes to the climate and surface conditions of Earth. This tapestry, of which we are a part, is unraveling, with its delicate patterns and motifs denigrated to near invisibility, disappearing at a rate and magnitude that rivals that of the great mass extinction events of the past (2, 3).