Increasingly common since 1980, persistent multi-year droughts will continue to advance with the warming climate, warns a study from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research (WSL), with Professor Francesca Pellicciotti from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) participating. This publicly available forty-year global quantitative inventory, now published in Science, seeks to inform policy regarding the environmental impact of human-induced climate change. It also detected previously ‘overlooked’ events.

A new study suggests that boosting adolescent mental health is linked with long-term economic benefits. In contrast to similar findings from prior studies, these estimated relationships could be readily incorporated into standard government budgeting analyses for assessing potential policy impacts. Nathaniel Counts of The Kennedy Forum, US, and colleagues present this work in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine on January 16^th.

The Golden Jubilee University National Hospital has become the first hospital to co-design friendly and reusable theatre caps made from sustainable plant-based material as part of a research project being led by the University of Strathclyde and Heriot-Watt University.

The project aims to reduce waste created by single-use disposable theatre cap products used by NHS Scotland while alleviating patient anxiety and improving the identification of theatre staff roles. Around 800,000 single-use disposable theatre caps are consumed every year in Scottish hospitals. The new caps are made from cellulosic fibre which is derived from plant-based material. They offer a sustainable alternative to traditional disposable options.

New research by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign education policy professor Paul M. Bruno suggests that schools could improve their recruitment of new faculty members by strategically adjusting their pay scales for novice and early-career teachers.

DDT soil pollution is still a major problem in many parts of the world. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a new method to manage ecological risks from the toxin by binding it with biochar. When they mixed biochar into contaminated soil at a former tree nursery, DDT uptake by earthworms in the soil was halved. This method may enable the growing of certain crops on land that is currently considered unusable due to the environmental risks.

Committed to furthering the engagement between researchers and practitioners, the ForestPaths project organised the next edition of the Policy Engagement Forum in November 2024. The online meeting was dedicated to showcases and discussions on Climate and Biodiversity-Smart approaches to forest management. Those were linked to the mitigation potential of forested areas in relation to climate change and biodiversity loss.