Recent Sustainability Research: Evolving Threats and Adaptive Language

The impact of climate change is hitting the global community hard. From heatwaves and floods to devastating storms and sea-level rise, the catastrophe of climate-driven weather has arrived.

Yet climate change is not the only threat keeping us up at night. Geopolitical tensions and economic fragility are playing their part in keeping policymakers busy and making the rest of us nervous about the future.

Three recent research reports show how sustainability researchers are jockeying for attention in a world with more than enough things to worry about. Each of the reports shows how the discourse of sustainability has adapted to reframe the natural world as more than just an end unto itself but as part of a complex social and economic system that depends upon the stability of each part to survive and thrive.

Cradle to Grave: The Ongoing Health Impact of Fossil Fuels

The Global Climate & Health Alliance released the Cradle to Grave: The Health Toll of Fossil Fuels and the Imperative for a Just Transition report on September 16, 2025. It examined the impact of fossil fuel extraction, consumption, and disposal on human health from pregnancy to retirement.

The report found that fossil fuels have significant impacts on human health at every stage of their development. Extraction, refining, transport, storage, combustion, and disposal all introduce dangerous pollutants into different ecosystems as they each take place in diverse locations. Extraction, for example, releases benzene, heavy metals, and particulates that contribute to cancers, respiratory disease, and neurological disorders in nearby populations. Combustion in power plants, vehicles, or for home energy releases particulate matter (PM) 2.5 and nitrogen oxides that can contribute to heart disease, cancer, and dementia.

Even after fossil fuels have been consumed, their health impacts can persist as post-consumption waste, and legacy pollution from abandoned fossil fuel sites can continue to degrade the environment and contribute to chronic disease for decades.

In a press release, report author and campaign lead at the Global Climate & Health Alliance Shweta Narayan noted that the long-term impacts of fossil fuels on the environment and human health impose a particularly heavy burden on marginalized communities that are less resilient and have fewer resources. This includes Indigenous groups, racial minorities, and low-income communities that are often located near fossil fuel infrastructure in areas researchers refer to as “sacrifice zones.”

“Even if carbon emissions were captured tomorrow, fossil fuels would still poison, displace, and destabilize,” said Narayan. “Not only are they a climate problem, fossil fuels are driving a global public health emergency.”

According to the report, the International Monetary Fund estimated that global fossil fuel subsidies reached $7 trillion (U.S.) in 2022, which includes explicit subsidies such as tax breaks and implicit subsidies resulting from unpriced societal costs for pollution, climate change, and environmental damage.

As one might expect, the report called for the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies and the eventual cessation of all activities related to the fossil fuel industry.

“Just as governments once curbed tobacco industry influence, they must now ban fossil fuel lobbying and disinformation,” said executive director of the Global Climate & Health Alliance Dr. Jeni Miller in the press release.

However, while that might once have been a mere aspirational – and perhaps easily dismissed – goal, environmental advocates now have an increasingly robust legal framework to bring to bear on such proposals, particularly for the “polluter pays” principle, in which the authors note that recent legal decisions, whether they are defeats or victories for environmental advocates, have laid the groundwork for challenging polluters in the courts.

“In 2021, Friends of the Earth Netherlands won a lawsuit against Shell, a Dutch court ordering the company to reduce CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 in line with the Paris Agreement,” said the report. “Although Shell's appeal succeeded in 2024, the ruling affirmed that corporations have a legal duty to cut emissions - setting a key precedent for future climate litigation.”

Europe's Environment 2025: Climate Change Threatens Competitiveness

The latest report from the European Environment Agency (EEA) provided a sobering look at the impact of anthropogenic climate change on European competitiveness. The Europe's Environment reports began in 1995 and are published every five years to provide assessments of Europe's environment, climate, and sustainability efforts for decision-makers at all levels of European government.

This seventh edition of the report used validated data from 38 countries to analyze past trends and forecast emerging issues, case studies, and sustainability challenges.

While the report focused on the environment, it clearly positioned itself in relation to the EU Competitive Compass, which highlighted the importance of innovation, decarbonization, and security as components of an economic strategy built on the energy transition, the circular economy, and reducing import dependencies. In other words, sustainability is critical not simply for supporting the environment in which all Europeans live but for the protection of the foundation of European economic prosperity.

“Europe,” states one passage in the report, “is critically dependent on natural resources for economic security, to which climate change and environmental degradation pose a direct threat. Protecting our natural resources, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and reducing pollution will build the resilience of vital societal functions that depend on nature, such as food security, drinking water, and flood defenses.”

The report's highlights make for a challenging read. Biodiversity is declining as a result of unsustainable consumption of natural resources, pollution, invasive alien species, and the impact of climate change. Eighty percent of protected habitats and 60–70% of EU soils are degraded. This environmental degradation is putting the European Union’s (EU) economic health in jeopardy. Nearly 75% of businesses rely on ecosystem services, and the loss of those critical elements will lead to significant economic instability.

“Protecting nature is not a cost,” said Executive Vice President for Clean, Just, and Competitive Transition Teresa Ribera in a press release. “It is an investment in competitiveness, resilience, and the well-being of our citizens.”

The EU is also suffering a water crisis, with water stress impacting 30% of Europe's territory and 34% of its population. Only 37% of EU water bodies had a high ecological status in 2021, with agriculture and its fertilizer and pesticide runoff degrading water quality.

While the report provided some good news, such as the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 37% since 1990, those successes were often offset by setbacks such as the reduction of the EU's carbon sink by 30% as a result of land use and forestry.

As the EU puts its long-touted sustainability framework under scrutiny with an eye toward simplification and even deregulation, environmental advocates are responding by contextualizing their research within the framework of EU economic competitiveness. In many ways, EU sustainability efforts can be seen as those that existed pre-Draghi report and those that will come about post-Draghi report, which relates to the landmark report by Mario Draghi from September 2024, which advocated for regulatory simplification to support EU competitiveness. Draghi's report caused the political equivalent of an earthquake for sustainability regulation, and sustainability supporters have responded by adopting Draghi's language of economic growth and its environmental dependencies to advocate for continued regulatory enforcement.

“As the fastest-warming continent, Europe has witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of climate change - most recently through the severe forest fires that swept across the summer,” said Commissioner for Climate, Net Zero, and Clean Growth Wopke Hoekstra. “The costs of inaction are enormous, and climate change poses a direct threat to our competitiveness. Staying the course is essential to safeguarding our economy.”

Planetary Health Check Tracks Collapsing Boundaries

The 2025 Planetary Health Check report from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Planetary Guardians showed that human activity has pushed the Earth's ecosystems to the brink of irrevocable damage and that without immediate action, the planet could face a bleak future.

The report used the concept of planetary boundaries to provide a benchmark for the impact of human activity on the climate. According to this concept, the Earth has, until recently, existed in a period of climatic stability and resilience called the Holocene, which has provided the necessary environmental conditions for humanity to thrive and develop a complex society.

Since the middle of the 20th century, the Holocene has given way to the Anthropocene, in which social and economic activity has exponentially increased to the point that humanity is now pushing the Earth's systems beyond their ability to self-regulate.

There are nine planetary boundaries that provide the framework for the health of Earth's systems:

• Climate change
• Introduction of novel entities
• Stratospheric ozone depletion
• Increase in atmospheric aerosol loading
• Ocean acidification
• Modification of biogeochemical flows
• Freshwater change
• Land system change
• Change in biosphere integrity

According to the report, most of these boundaries - with the exception of stratospheric ozone depletion and the increase in atmospheric aerosol loading - have been breached.

“More than three-quarters of the Earth's support systems are not in the safe zone,” said PIK Director Johan Rockström in a press release. “Humanity is pushing beyond the limits of a safe operating space, increasing the risk of destabilizing the planet.”

This year's report assessed the first breach of a new boundary: ocean acidification driven by fossil fuel burning, deforestation, and land use. When the oceans can no longer be a stabilizing element in the Earth's ecosystem, the impact will be felt far beyond the oceans themselves.

“The ocean is our planet's life-support system,” said oceanographer and Planetary Guardian Sylvia Earle in the press release. “Without healthy seas, there is no healthy planet. For billions of years, the ocean has been Earth's great stabilizer: generating oxygen, shaping climate, and supporting the diversity of life. Today, acidification is a flashing red warning light on the dashboard of Earth's stability. Ignore it, and we risk collapsing the very foundation of our living world.”