Environmental exposure to active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) can have negative effects on the health of ecosystems and humans. While numerous studies have monitored APIs in rivers, these employ different analytical methods, measure different APIs, and have ignored many of the countries of the world. This makes it difficult to quantify the scale of the problem from a global perspective. Furthermore, comparison of the existing data, generated for different studies/regions/continents, is challenging due to the vast differences between the analytical methodologies employed. Here, we present a global-scale study of API pollution in 258 of the world’s rivers, representing the environmental influence of 471.4 million people across 137 geographic regions. Samples were obtained from 1,052 locations in 104 countries (representing all continents and 36 countries not previously studied for API contamination) and analyzed for 61 APIs. Highest cumulative API concentrations were observed in sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and South America. The most contaminated sites were in low- to middle-income countries and were associated with areas with poor wastewater and waste management infrastructure and pharmaceutical manufacturing. The most frequently detected APIs were carbamazepine, metformin, and caffeine (a compound also arising from lifestyle use), which were detected at over half of the sites monitored. Concentrations of at least one API at 25.7% of the sampling sites were greater than concentrations considered safe for aquatic organisms, or which are of concern in terms of selection for antimicrobial resistance. Therefore, pharmaceutical pollution poses a global threat to environmental and human health, as well as to delivery of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

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Small islands are vulnerable to the synergistic effects of climate change and anthropogenic disturbances due to the fact of their small area, geographical isolation, responsive ecologies, rapidly growing and developing populations and exposure to sea level and climate change. These changes exert pressures on ecosystem services, such as the provisioning of resources, and therefore threaten the sustainability of livelihoods. We reviewed key sustainability and livelihoods literature to bring together concepts of environmental livelihood resilience and stability across temporal and spatial scales and integrated them to produce a new conceptual framework for dynamic environmental livelihood sustainability (DESL). This framework aims to facilitate the incorporation of local community perspectives into water, energy and food nexus thinking about sustainable land use to support local livelihoods. Finally, we provide insights from this case study to evaluate the effectiveness of the DESL framework in addressing gaps in existing frameworks. We suggest this framing provides a mechanism for enhancing the agency of communities to produce more cohesive and inclusive land use management plans that can lead to enhanced environmental sustainability pathways.

Rapid rates of land use and land cover change (LULCC) in eastern Africa and limited instances of genuinely equal partnerships involving scientists, communities and decision makers challenge the development of robust pathways toward future environmental and socioeconomic sustainability. We use a participatory modelling tool, Kesho, to assess the biophysical, socioeconomic, cultural and governance factors that influenced past (1959–1999) and present (2000–2018) LULCC in northern Tanzania and to simulate four scenarios of land cover change to the year 2030. Simulations of the scenarios used spatial modelling to integrate stakeholders’ perceptions of future environmental change with social and environmental data on recent trends in LULCC. From stakeholders’ perspectives, between 1959 and 2018, LULCC was influenced by climate variability, availability of natural resources, agriculture expansion, urbanization, tourism growth and legislation governing land access and natural resource management. Among other socio-environmental-political LULCC drivers, the stakeholders envisioned that from 2018 to 2030 LULCC will largely be influenced by land health, natural and economic capital, and political will in implementing land use plans and policies. The projected scenarios suggest that by 2030 agricultural land will have expanded by 8–20% under different scenarios and herbaceous vegetation and forest land cover will be reduced by 2.5–5% and 10–19% respectively. Stakeholder discussions further identified desirable futures in 2030 as those with improved infrastructure, restored degraded landscapes, effective wildlife conservation, and better farming techniques. The undesirable futures in 2030 were those characterized by land degradation, poverty, and cultural loss. Insights from our work identify the implications of future LULCC scenarios on wildlife and cultural conservation and in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets by 2030. The Kesho approach capitalizes on knowledge exchanges among diverse stakeholders, and in the process promotes social learning, provides a sense of ownership of outputs generated, democratizes scientific understanding, and improves the quality and relevance of the outputs.

Rangelands throughout sub-Saharan Africa are currently undergoing two major pressures: climate change (through altered rainfall and seasonality patterns) and habitat fragmentation (brought by land use change driven by land demand for agriculture and conservation). Here we explore these dimensions, investigating the impact of land use change decisions, by pastoralists in southern Kenya rangelands, on human well-being and animal densities using an agent-based model. The constructed agent-based model uses input biomass data simulated by the Lund-Potsdam-Jena General Ecosystem Simulator (LPJ-GUESS) dynamic vegetation model and parameterized with data from literature. Scenarios of land use change under different rainfall years, land tenure types and levels of wildlife conservation support were simulated. Reflecting reality, our results show livestock grazing as the predominant land use that changes with precipitation and land tenure leading to varying livelihood strategies. For example, agriculture is the most common livelihood in wet years and conservation levels increase with increasing support of wildlife conservation initiatives. Our model demonstrates the complex and multiple interactions between pastoralists, land management and the environment. We highlight the importance of understanding the conditions driving the sustainability of semi-arid rangelands and the communities they support, and the role of external actors, such as wildlife conservation investors, in East Africa.

This study presents a multidisciplinary perspective for understanding environmental change and emerging socio-ecological interactions across the Amboseli region of southwestern Kenya. We focus on late Holocene (<5,000 cal yr. BP) changes and continuities reconstructed from sedimentary, archeological, historical records and socio-ecological models. We utilize multi-disciplinary approaches to understand environmental-ecosystem-social interactions over the longue durée and use this to simulate different land use scenarios supporting conservation and sustainable livelihoods using a socio-ecological model. Today the semi-arid Amboseli landscape supports a large livestock and wildlife population, sustained by a wide variety of plants and extensive rangelands regulated by seasonal rainfall and human activity. Our data provide insight into how large-scale and long-term interactions of climate, people, livestock, wildlife and external connections have shaped the ecosystems across the Amboseli landscape. Environmental conditions were dry between ∼5,000 and 2,000 cal yr. BP, followed by two wet periods at ∼2,100-1,500 and 1,400-800 cal yr. BP with short dry periods; the most recent centuries were characterized by variable climate with alternative dry and wet phases with high spatial heterogeneity. Most evident in paleo and historical records is the changing woody to grass cover ratio, driven by changes in climate and fire regimes entwined with fluctuating elephant, cattle and wild ungulate populations moderated by human activity, including elephant ivory trade intensification. Archeological perspectives on the occupation of different groups (hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and farmers) in Amboseli region and the relationships between them are discussed. An overview of the known history of humans and elephants, expanding networks of trade, and the arrival and integration of metallurgy, livestock and domesticated crops in the wider region is provided. In recent decades, increased runoff and flooding have resulted in the expansion of wetlands and a reduction of woody vegetation, compounding problems created by increased enclosure and privatization of these landscapes. However, most Githumbi et al.Long-Term Multidisciplinary Perspectives at Amboseli, Kenya of the wetlands outside of the protected area are drying up because of the intensified water extraction by the communities surrounding the National Park and on the adjacent mountains areas, who have increased in numbers, become sedentary and diversified land use around the wetlands.

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Despite mobile livestock grazing being widely recognized as one of the most viable and sustainable land uses for semi-arid savanna, which can deliver clear wildlife conservation benefits, the levels of pastoral sedentarization and transitions to agricultural livelihoods continue to rise in many pastoral communities across the world. Using questionnaire interviews with community elders, our study assessed changing trends in livestock grazing, wildlife conservation, and sedentarization levels from the 1960s to the present day across three savannas in southern Kenya. Our study identified the drivers of land uses and land subdivision and the implications of land use change on savanna ecology. Over the last half century, there has been a 30% decline in livestock grazing land in southern Kenya due to the expansion of land for agriculture and wildlife conservation. Despite the decline, livestock grazing remains the preferred land use in subdivided and privatized lands. Pastoralist land used for wildlife conservation was perceived to be higher (30%) in southwestern Kenya compared to southeastern Kenya (16%), despite their geographical proximity. These historical insights provide useful lessons for maintaining space for wildlife, diversifying livelihoods, and increasing the resilience of pastoralists in the process of transitioning from traditional subsistence to market economies and the threats of social and ecological dislocation.