2021, Pradhan, Prajal, Subedi, Daya Raj, Khatiwada, Dilip, Joshi, Kirti Kusum, Kafle, Sagar, Chhetri, Raju Pandit, Dhakal, Shobhakar, Gautam, Ambika Prasad, Khatiwada, Padma Prasad, Mainaly, Jony, Onta, Sharad, Pandey, Vishnu Prasad, Parajuly, Keshav, Pokharel, Sijal, Satyal, Poshendra, Singh, Devendra Raj, Talchabhadel, Rocky, Tha, Rupesh, Thapa, Bhesh Raj, Adhikari, Kamal, Adhikari, Shankar, Chandra Bastakoti, Ram, Bhandari, Pitambar, Bharati, Saraswoti, Bhusal, Yub Raj, Bahadur BK, Man, Bogati, Ramji, Kafle, Simrin, Khadka, Manohara, Khatiwada, Nawa Raj, Lal, Ajay Chandra, Neupane, Dinesh, Neupane, Kaustuv Raj, Ojha, Rajit, Regmi, Narayan Prasad, Rupakheti, Maheswar, Sapkota, Alka, Sapkota, Rupak, Sharma, Mahashram, Shrestha, Gitta, Shrestha, Indira, Shrestha, Khadga Bahadur, Tandukar, Sarmila, Upadhyaya, Shyam, Kropp, Jürgen P., Bhuju, Dinesh Raj

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted social, economic, and environmental systems worldwide, slowing down and reversing the progress made in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDGs belong to the 2030 Agenda to transform our world by tackling humankind's challenges to ensure well-being, economic prosperity, and environmental protection. We explore the potential impacts of the pandemic on SDGs for Nepal. We followed a knowledge co-creation process with experts from various professional backgrounds, involving five steps: online survey, online workshop, assessment of expert's opinions, review and validation, and revision and synthesis. The pandemic has negatively impacted most SDGs in the short term. Particularly, the targets of SDG 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13 have and will continue to have weakly to moderately restricting impacts. However, a few targets of SDG 2, 3, 6, and 11 could also have weakly promoting impacts. The negative impacts have resulted from impeding factors linked to the pandemic. Many of the negative impacts may subside in the medium and long terms. The key five impeding factors are lockdowns, underemployment and unemployment, closure of institutions and facilities, diluted focus and funds for non-COVID-19-related issues, and anticipated reduction in support from development partners. The pandemic has also opened a window of opportunity for sustainable transformation, which is short-lived and narrow. These opportunities are lessons learned for planning and action, socio-economic recovery plan, use of information and communication technologies and the digital economy, reverse migration and “brain gain,” and local governments' exercising authorities.

2015, Ostberg, Sebastian, Schaphoff, Sibyll, Lucht, Wolfgang, Gerten, Dieter

Human land use and anthropogenic climate change (CC) are placing mounting pressure on natural ecosystems worldwide, with impacts on biodiversity, water resources, nutrient and carbon cycles. Here, we present a quantitative macro-scale comparative analysis of the separate and joint dual impacts of land use and land cover change (LULCC) and CC on the terrestrial biosphere during the last ca. 300 years, based on simulations with a dynamic global vegetation model and an aggregated metric of simultaneous biogeochemical, hydrological and vegetation-structural shifts. We find that by the beginning of the 21st century LULCC and CC have jointly caused major shifts on more than 90% of all areas now cultivated, corresponding to 26% of the land area. CC has exposed another 26% of natural ecosystems to moderate or major shifts. Within three centuries, the impact of LULCC on landscapes has increased 13-fold. Within just one century, CC effects have caught up with LULCC effects.