A picture is worth a thousand words: visualising the SDG challenges
Over the last few decades, people have become increasingly aware of the global and systemic nature of many of our environmental problems today. This is recognized in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable…
Per-capita estimations of long-term historical land use and the consequences for global change research
Changes in land use and land cover are important in global climate change, but the many uncertainties in historical estimates seriously hamper climate modelling. We collected new data on estimated per…
Micronutrients for agricultural intensification – Is Sub-Saharan Africa at risk?
There are no substitutes for micronutrients which are indispensable for plant growth and the human diet; nevertheless low concentrations of these elements in African soils are looming and a cause for…
Upscaling is critically important to enable a wide-scale integration of renewable energy sources. This paper mobilises literature on the strategic management of experimental niches to explore the…
New EU-scale environmental scenarios until 2050 – Scenario process and initial scenario applications
As part of the Openness project, new EU scenarios focusing on natural capital and ecosystem services were developed. These were applied at different regional socio-environmental conditions…
Increasing economic inequality in cities, and the spatial translation of that into more segregated neighbourhoods, is top of the political agenda in developed countries. While the overall living…
PBL has evaluated the role of Green Deals in preparing the path towards a circular economy. The evaluation shows that although Green Deals make a valuable contribution to the process of green…
Demographic change in the Netherlands: Strategies for resilient labour markets
In 2013 PBL contributed to a study on demographic changes, commissioned by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). PBL's contribution has now been published as a book…
Exploring future changes in land use and land condition and the impacts on food, water, climate change and biodiversity: Scenarios for the UNCCD Global Land Outlook
The pressure on land is growing in many regions of the world, due to the increasing demand for arable crops, meat and dairy products, bio-energy and timber, and is exacerbated by land degradation and…
The role of decentralized systems in providing universal electricity access in Sub-Saharan Africa – A model-based approach
Poverty and lack of access to electricity are highly correlated. In Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the poorest regions in the world, two in every three people have no access to electricity. This paper…