Achieving universal access to clean cooking is essential for improving health, equality, environmental, and other sustainability outcomes. Yet without accelerated action, 1.8 billion people will still lack access to clean cooking in 2030. Research can support the design of evidence-based clean cooking strategies that are tailored to local realities. Here, we propose a research agenda to accelerate clean cooking transitions. Key areas of focus include enhancing modern and clean technologies, developing better and more inclusive planning tools, integrating co-benefits, addressing behavioral and affordability challenges, fostering innovative policy and business models, as well as understanding the political economy of clean cooking. For such research to be effective in empowering local communities, attention to clean cooking needs to be more effectively integrated into educational curricula and embody the principles of interdisciplinary and open science. Collaborative efforts are imperative to drive this transition and achieve significant benefits across sustainable development spheres.

Climate policies are increasingly politicized, and decisions often do not survive changes in government. This undermines international climate agreements, as effective governance requires predictability for businesses and other actors. A mechanism is needed to ensure long-term climate policies remain credible across administrations. Similar institutional structures exist for monetary policy in most Western countries. Climate policy could benefit from comparable arrangements, following the central bank principle of arm's length distance from politics.

We explore the integration of climate action and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the first two submissions of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) using an AI-based, human-validated framework. Our goal is to provide ex-ante evidence relevant to assessing policy adequacy. We find disparities in topics of interest with high-income countries emphasizing systemic challenges (health, SDG3) and low-income nations prioritizing the water-energy-food nexus (SDGs 6-7-12) and natural resource management (SDG15). We discuss what these diverging development trajectories imply for the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development in terms of global inequality, sustainable finance flows and multilateral governance.

Digital technologies are profoundly influencing all economic sectors and have potential to contribute towards a sustainable society. At the same time, the production, use and waste management of these technologies, which lie at the core of the economic sector of information and communication technology (ICT), are causing environmental impacts. Previous studies have applied life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and life cycle thinking to assess current and future direct energy use and climate impact of the global ICT sector. These studies frequently arrive at contradictory results regarding future impacts. Calculation approaches applied differ significantly, the consideration of key aspects varies, fast-growing digital technologies are seldom included in future scenarios and uncertainty analyses are typically limited. The aim of this study is to develop guidelines for assessments of the current and future direct energy use and climate impact of the global ICT sector based on LCA methodology and life cycle thinking. The guidelines have been developed based on literature reviews, the authors’ aggregated and broad expertise in this topic and in workshops. Key aspects in influencing the current and future direct energy use and climate impact of the global ICT sector, covering its three subdomains of end-user devices, networks and data centres as well as all life cycle stages, are identified. These include, for example, the number of end-user devices, number of subscriptions and the annual electricity use of networks and data centres. The guidelines address challenges for practitioners and can contribute towards more transparent and coherent future studies.

Introduction The latest climate reports underscore the importance of climate change mitigation behaviours in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving the climate goals. There is a growing demand among the general population for guidance on sustainable behaviour change. Previous research has indicated that behavioural interventions could play a significant role in facilitating this type of behaviour change. However, the effectiveness of such approaches has yet to be rigorously tested under scientific conditions. This project aims to assess whether a novel, intervention “Sustainable Choices” effectively promotes climate change mitigation behaviours when compared to a control condition. Methods Voluntary participants will be recruited from the general population in Sweden and randomized to either “Sustainable Choices”, an online, behavioural intervention targeted at Climate Change Mitigation Behaviours (CCMBs), or a waitlist, both 5 weeks of duration. The target sample size is N=680. The primary outcome of the study will be pre- to post-intervention difference in climate change mitigation behaviours, measured with the Climate Mitigation Behaviour Scale (CLIMBS). Secondary outcomes will include acceptability measures and effects on psychological well-being. Naturalistic follow-up assessments will be administered at 1-, 3- and 6-months after the post-measurement. Discussion The increasing awareness of the link between climate change and individual sustainable lifestyle choices has generated a significant interest in this field. Our aim is to evaluate a scalable intervention targeted at CCMBs, while also promoting psychological well-being associated with sustainable lifestyles.

To meet the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) must receive adequate and balanced funding. This study applies artificial intelligence to analyze research proposals accepted between 2015 and 2023 in the European Union and the United States, focusing on datasets from the European Research Council and the National Science Foundation, respectively. Despite the growing application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in various domains, there remains a lack of comprehensive analysis that applies AI to examine funding allocation across SDGs and gender disparities in scientific research. This study addresses this unmet need by using AI to uncover imbalances in funding distribution, offering insights into current funding instruments. We reveal critical coverage disparities across SDGs, with both funding instruments prioritizing SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), highlighting a potential overemphasis on this goal. Additionally, we document pronounced gender imbalances among principal investigators across nearly all SDGs, except for SDG 5 (Gender Equality), in which female researchers are comparatively better represented. Our results indicate an urgent need for more inclusive and balanced approaches to achieve sustainable development, starting with allocation of research funding. By providing a nuanced understanding of funding dynamics and advocating strategic reallocations, this study offers actionable policy design and planning insights to foster a more equitable and comprehensive support system for sustainability-focused research endeavours.