The nitrogen decade: mobilizing global action on nitrogen to 2030 and beyond

Sutton, Mark A.; Howard, Clare; Kanter, David; Lassaletta, Luis; Móring, Andrea; Raghuram, Nandula; Read, Nicole

doi:10.1016/j.oneear.2020.12.016

Cited by 97 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 7 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This has been initiated by the International Nitrogen conferences that started in 1998 in the Netherlands (25) and was followed by conferences in the United States (2002), where the International Nitrogen Initiative was initiated, China (2004), Brazil (2007), India (2010), Uganda (2013), Australia (2016), and Berlin [2020 and 2021 (online)]. All these conferences have led to growing attention worldwide to the Nr issues and have created an international community that closely works together to address the complex Nr issues under, e.g., the International Nitrogen Management System (INMS) (26).…”

Section: Nitrogen Management: Progress Over the Past 20 Yearsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This can best be illustrated by the number of publications on Nr that increased with a factor of two per decade since 1998. Not only the number of papers but also the impact factor changed, with many papers from high impact factor journals such as Science, Nature, Biogeochemistry, One Earth, and Ambio (see 3,18,19,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] for some example overviews). The literature covers a broad range of topics related to Nr issues, such as Nr use, the sources, and pathways into the environment and transport and exchange processes, impacts, up to policy options to reduce the impacts.…”

Section: Scientific Progressmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…INMS was initiated by the United Nations Global Environmental Fund in 2016. INMS is a global program that aims to contribute to reducing Nr pollution through a global Nr assessment and providing inputs to Nr management policies (26,56). In 2019, UNEP published the Frontiers report with emerging issues including Nr and launched the UN Global Campaign on Sustainable Nitrogen Management, calling for more attention to Nr management (56).…”

Section: Policy Preparationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The Human Creation and Use of Reactive Nitrogen: A Global and Regional Perspective

Galloway

Bleeker

Erisman

2021

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

More food and energy allow for more people who then require more food and energy, and so it has gone for centuries. At the same time, economic progress leads to a different lifestyle with an increasing demand for energy and food, also accelerating food waste. Fueling this food-energy-population dynamic is an ever-increasing conversion of unreactive dinitrogen (N2) to reactive N (Nr), which then results in a cascade of positive (food and energy for people) and negative (damage to people, climate, biodiversity, and environment) impacts as Nr is distributed throughout Earth systems. The most important step in reducing the environmental impacts of Nr is limiting its human-based creation. In this article, therefore, we focus on this most important first step: the conversion of N2 to Nr by human activities. Specifically, we examine Nr creation and use (they are different!) on a global and regional basis and Nr use on a global and regional per capita basis. In addition, we introduce the metric Nr Use Index (NUI), which can be used to track and project Nr use relative to a fixed point in time. We then assess the progress in Nr management over the past 20 years. Our article presents a case study of the Netherlands to show what one country, beset by Nr-related problems that have led to an N crisis, did to address those problems and what worked and what didn't work. The article concludes with an assessment of what the future might hold with respect to Nr creation and use, including a review of other projections. We expect that NUI will increase especially in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The other parts of the world are consolidating or even decreasing NUI. In Latin America and Asia, there is limited agricultural land, and by increasing NUI for food the risk of Nr pollution is very high. The Netherlands has shown not only what effects can be expected with increasing NUI but also what successful policies can be introduced to limit environmental losses. Our assessment shows that Nr creation needs to be limited to prevent local to global environmental impacts. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 46 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

show abstract

Section: Nitrogen Management: Progress Over the Past 20 Yearsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Scientific Progressmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Policy Preparationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Human Creation and Use of Reactive Nitrogen: A Global and Regional Perspective

Galloway

Bleeker

Erisman

2021

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Production of the uneaten food accounts for 8-10% of anthropogenic emissions and uses 30% of arable land and 20% of freshwater withdraw 6 . Food wastage also has dramatic effect on depleting nite essential resources such as P 12 and aggravating reactive N (Nr) problems 13,14 . Making matters worse, wasted food in land lls (developed economies) or open dump (low-income countries) can brew additional problems, such as transmitting diseases via breeding of vectors and releasing GHGs and other pollutants to the atmosphere and hydrosphere 8,15 .…”

Section: Mainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing food’s resource and climate footprints via food waste upcycling

Dou

Wang

Ying

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The global food system is a major driver of most-pressing sustainability challenges such as climate change, unsustainable resource extraction, and altered biogeochemical cycles of N and P1-5. Food loss and waste is at the heart of the problem6,7. With 1/3 of food uneaten but lost/wasted, not only do resources consumed in producing the food ‘go down the drain’ but also the wasted food continues to brew health and pollution problems8,9. Here we show that food waste recovery and upcycling can effectively mitigate food’s unintended consequences. Using global primary data, we estimated that recovering and treating food waste via composting, anaerobic digestion, or feed-making technologies could reduce carbon footprints by 614–1041 Mt CO2-eq, compared to landfill baseline, potentially offsetting global food system’s climate burden by 4.5–7.6%. Up to 6.6 Mt nutrients could be re-captured for soil-crop-based upcycling. The feed-making option could generate up to 155.6 Mt novel feeds for animal-based upcycling, potentially replacing 41% and 9% of maize and soy in global livestock feeding. Feed grain replacement can bring an array of cascading benefits such as land and fertilizer spared and pollutions avoided, which are evaluated for the U.S. and China as case-study countries.

show abstract

“…For over two decades, the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI) has been galvanizing scientists and policy makers to overcome this growing challenge from agriculture, fossil fuel burning, and other anthropogenic sources ( www.initrogen.org ). Its efforts culminated in the recent intergovernmental recognition of this global concern and the adoption of the first ever India-led UN resolution on sustainable nitrogen management (Raghuram and Sharma, 2019 ; UNEP, 2019 ; Raghuram et al, 2021 ; Sutton et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%