Page 270 - Microbial methane cycling in a warming world From biosphere to atmosphere Michiel H in t Zandt

Chapter 11. Integration and outlook
(S4F NL) came together and composed a collaborative statement for the Netherlands in the lead up to the global strike in September 2019 calling for climate action, which was signed by over 2,100 scientists, scholars, and organizations (Scientists4Future NL 2019). I myself participated in the national movement S4F NL and I am part of the local S4F Nijmegen organization.
The scientific community has a crucial role in outreach and communication. All layers of society are vital for bridging the gap between theory and practice. It is of utmost importance to widen and deepen public engagement with climate change. Communication is not easy, and it is a challenge to communicate in ways that resonate with the value of your audiences (McLoughlin et al. 2018).
There are five major areas identified for targeting improvement of sustainability (Fig. 4). These include cities and their design, energy generation and usage, the production, distribution and consumption of our food, the management of nature on the planet, and securing the future human population on a planet with diminishing resources. Examples of measures within these five areas with high climate impacts include, for cities, the replacement of garden tiles with vegetation, and the construction of green roofs and wadis to collect rainwater during downpours and to, simultaneously, lower temperatures during summer (Bowler et al. 2010; Yao et al. 2018). Regarding energy generation, renewable energy from water (hydroelectric power), wind, and the sun provide a good and sustainable mix of sources that are present in different landscapes and diverse enough for dynamic weather conditions (Zou et al. 2016; IEA 2020b). For food consumption, the reduction of meat consumption, with an emphasis on red meats, will not only strongly reduce the climate impact of our foods, but simultaneously reduce ecological impacts and food shortages in developing countries (Schiermeier 2019). Major areas of attention for nature management are enforced protection of current ecosystems and the development of ecological networks that increase biodiversity and ecosystem stability with minor modifications (Jongman 1995; Watson and Venter 2017). For securing the human population on a planet with limited resources, moving towards a sustainable “cradle-to-cradle” economy is essential. The three keys of such a circular economy are: reduce, reuse and recycle (Braungart, McDonough and Bollinger 2007; Silvestre, De Brito and Pinheiro 2014; Kirchherr, Reike and Hekkert 2017). All of these measures are relatively fast, financially beneficial on the long term, but most importantly they make a great positive contribution to the world of tomorrow.
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