This study considers the contours of the coal transition in the United States from the perspective of local planning responses to coal plant retirements in the U.S. West. Plant closures in the region affect a diverse set of geographies and have developed in a complex, uncoordinated policy environment. The study applies an assessment framework informed by economic geography and community planning scholarship to a dataset of 12 planning documents written by and for local communities experiencing coal facility closures. The findings highlight the absence of effective strategies to address lost local revenues, lack of connections between environmental quality and long-term economic resilience, and a range of levels of acceptance of the coal transition. Together, the plans demonstrate the negative consequences of an uncoordinated, contradictory policy environment for transition planning at the local level and the need for policy interventions to address issues of equity and efficiency in this process.

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Urgency and deliberateness are often at odds when executing conservation projects, especially as the scale and complexity of objectives increases. The pace of environmental degradation supports immediate and measurable action. However, best practices for adaptive governance and building resilient social-ecological systems call for more deliberate efforts and participatory processes, which can be slow. We explore conflicts between urgency and deliberateness and the potential for their reconciliation through a case study of the challenges of conserving native rangelands in North America's Northern Great Plains, an ecoregion targeted for global conservation initiatives. This region is undergoing a significant social-ecological transition, which underscores a need to rethink conservation strategies in light of the social-ecological system dynamics and potential future trajectories. Based on a structured narrative literature review process and iterative engagement with key regional stakeholders, we identify three interrelated factors critical to the system's future outcomes that illustrate system complexity as well as trade-offs between urgent and deliberate action and unilateral and multilateral approaches to conservation: (1) influences of land management on biodiversity, (2) economic restructuring and shifting land use priorities, and (3) changing climate and disturbance regimes. We identify key gaps in the literature for each factor and across the factors-an effort that informs our call for research and practice agendas that address uncertainty and complexity at regional scales through more inclusive and future-oriented approaches.

Achieving food security is a critical challenge of the Anthropocene that may conflict with environmental and societal goals such as increased energy access. The “fuel versus food” debate coupled with climate mitigation efforts has given rise to next-generation biofuels. Findings of this systematic review indicate just over half of the studies (56% of 224 publications) reported a negative impact of bioenergy production on food security. However, no relationship was found between bioenergy feedstocks that are edible versus inedible and food security (P value = 0.15). A strong relationship was found between bioenergy and type of food security parameter (P value < 0.001), sociodemographic index of study location (P value = 0.001), spatial scale (P value < 0.001), and temporal scale (P value = 0.017). Programs and policies focused on bioenergy and climate mitigation should monitor multiple food security parameters at various scales over the long term toward achieving diverse sustainability goals.

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