People working directly on animal farms arguably have the most influence over their animals’ welfare. Farm-workers’ perspectives and knowledge of animal welfare affect their ability to meet the needs of animals and to address concerns related to animal welfare as they arise. This study investigates the perspectives of people working on broiler chicken farms in West Java, Indonesia. Thirty-eight participants consisting of owners and related staff completed a survey that comprised of 52 questions and that targeted four key topics. These topics were pain in chickens, knowledge of animal welfare, ability to identify welfare concerns in broiler chickens, and knowledge of welfare indicators in broiler chickens. A second survey investigated concerns of broiler chicken farm managers, by surveying 14 farm managers in West Java. Results revealed that all participants believe chickens can feel pain, and most believe that chickens are sentient. Sixty-five percent of the participants stated they understood the concept of animal welfare, and knowledge of animal welfare was significantly correlated with education level. Key concerns about broiler chicken farming were extreme weather resulting in difficulty sourcing clean water and rice husks for litter, and disease. Lack of procedures for culling sick and injured birds was also a significant welfare concern.

England’s water system is under intensifying pressure from scarcity, flooding, pollution, biodiversity loss and climate change, yet the prevailing model of water cycle management remains fragmented, resource-intensive and too often focused on managing symptoms rather than causes. This paper outlines an approach to integrated water cycle management that aligns with the ideas set out by Kate Raworth, in her book “Doughnut economics: seven ways to think like a 21st century economist”. Raworth envisions a just and safe space for society where our economies are geared to ensuring that everyone has the essential resources required to fulfil their human rights but resource use is limited to a level that can be sustained within the limits imposed by "ecological ceilings". This aligns with the research by Johan Rockström and his colleagues at Stockholm Resilience Centre who have developed the concept of nine “Earth system boundaries”, the exceedance of which risks triggering large-scale, abrupt or irreversible environmental change. By reframing water management in England as the stewardship of social-ecological systems to deliver human wellbeing within environmental limits, this paper supports policy momentum created by the Cunliffe Review and the Government’s New Vision for Water, while pushing further towards a genuinely integrated, catchment-based and cross-sectoral approach. Its practical contribution is to translate doughnut thinking into the water context through clear operating principles, measurable outcomes and indicative targets. Doughnut economics, applied within the context of a whole water cycle approach to regulation and governance, has potential to centre human needs (affordability, reliability, amenity) and planetary limits (spills, nutrients, flows, biodiversity) within a single, practical framework. At a time when England needs both renewed public legitimacy and more effective delivery, the paper offers a strategic framework for achieving a safe and just water future that restores rivers, reduces demand, improves resilience and enables prosperity within planetary boundaries.

The aim of this study was to provide robust evidence on the long-term use of non-nutritive sweetened (NNS) beverages on weight management, by comparing NNS beverages and water during 1 year of assisted weight management followed by a voluntary, unassisted 1-year extension. In this parallel-group, open-label, controlled equivalence trial, 493 adults with BMI 27–35 kg/m2 who regularly consumed cold beverages were randomised 1:1 to water (n 246) or NNS beverages (n 247). Participants joined a group behavioural weight-management programme comprising assisted meetings weekly (12-week weight-loss phase) then monthly (40-week weight-maintenance phase), followed by unassisted monitoring for 52 weeks with a final meeting at week 104. The final 52-week unassisted phase was completed by 220 participants (water: n 117; NNS beverages: n 103), 27·7 % of whom were NNS beverage-naïve (naïve was defined as NNS beverages comprising ≤ 25 % of beverages in the 5 years before screening). In the unassisted monitoring phase, the primary endpoint was weight change from baseline at week 104 (equivalence: two-sided P > 0·05). Participants consuming water maintained a weight loss of 3·7 kg over 104 weeks, compared with 4·8 kg with NNS beverages; the between-group difference was not significant. After the final 52-week unassisted phase of the 104-week behavioural weight-management programme, water and NNS beverages showed equivalence regarding weight change from baseline. Our findings suggest people can lose weight and maintain it for 2 years, when drinking either NNS beverages or water and taking part in weight-management programmes.

This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02591134.

This paper employs autoethnography and poetic inquiry to examine how childhood experiences along the west coast of India were entangled with early understandings of environmental education. Drawing on memories of growing up in a rural region, it traces everyday intra-actions with land, sea, plants and community practices to illustrate how environmental awareness emerges through relational, place-based learning/unlearning rather than through universalized frameworks. By weaving poetic inquiry and becoming-with literature, the article disrupts linear and Western epistemologies of research and learning. The article unfolds through two interwoven processes: first, a reflexive re-turn to childhood memories through poems that foreground relational encounters with landscapes and more-than-human beings; and second, becoming-with literature by attending to scholarship on local grassroots mo(v)ements in the Vasai–Virar region. Drawing on Barad’s (2006) notion of diffraction, the paper attends to how experiences, memories and texts intra-act to produce complex, entangled sticky webs of relations. This article argues that environmental education can benefit from recognizing situated, relational and place-based ways of knowing. In doing so, it contributes to conversations on decolonizing research practices and (re)thinking how environmental education is understood, narrated and enacted within educational contexts.

This paper examines the cultural, ecological and political dimensions of the contemporary water crisis through a curatorial and environmental humanities lens. Through the watery conceptual epoch of the Hydrocene, it highlights the work of artists and interdisciplinary practitioners whose hydro-artistic methods propose ways to realign human–water relations. Central to this analysis is the role of curatorial care, here understood as a practice of convening, holding and enabling reciprocal encounters between bodies of water, artists and communities. Bringing these diverse practices into dialogue, the paper proposes water not only as subject matter but as a potential collaborator and leaky agent. It argues that such watery approaches are vital to reshaping collective imaginaries and navigating the planetary water crisis. Extending the conceptual framework developed in the author’s monograph, this paper works with curatorial care as a situated methodology. Through a responsive roundtable bringing marine science, acoustic research and documentary filmmaking into dialogue with hydro-artistic practice, it asks how curatorial work can itself become a mode of inquiry and how artistic and cross-disciplinary water encounters might operate as forms of environmental learning beyond the classroom.

This article examines the political ecology of water and ethnic conflict in Kirkuk, Iraq. Kirkuk is an internally disputed frontier territory, controlled by the federal government of Iraq but claimed by Kurdish nationalists. Kirkuk contains some of Iraq’s largest oil fields and most productive agricultural lands. In recent decades Kirkuk has also faced water shortages tied to global climate change. The article deploys survey data, supplemented by qualitative historical research, to evaluate framing of environmental security and the relationship between water insecurity, ethnic conflict, and governance. We find that commitments to competing programs for territorial control in Kirkuk correlate with different framing of ecological risk factors. Arabic-speaking respondents frame water scarcity as a matter for the federal government. Kurdish-speaking respondents prefer to enlist the Kurdistan Regional Government or local politicians to deal with water scarcity, undercutting federal jurisdiction. These findings cast doubt on environmental security and peacebuilding theories which suggest that ecological scarcity can spur inter-ethnic cooperation toward sustainability. Rather, commitment to different ethnoterritorial programs justify different perspectives on ecological change. At a policy level, these findings show that political conciliation must come before progress in environmental peacebuilding.

This review considers the current status, and highlights existing knowledge gaps, on Antarctic terrestrial and freshwater biological responses to climate change. Climate change is considered to be one of the major drivers of future ecosystem change in Antarctica. Understanding the biological responses, and associated shifts in biodiversity patterns, biotic interactions and processes, that are likely to occur under continued climate change is fundamental for predicting its consequences for the functioning of Antarctic ecosystems. However, quantifying changes in species abundance, biodiversity, community composition and biotic interactions, and how these are influenced by variations in a multitude of environmental variables, is challenging. All biological groups in the Antarctic terrestrial and freshwater domains currently show low species richness at higher latitudes, indicating that there should be scope for lower-latitude species to expand their distributions southwards under warming conditions. The northern, ‘trailing edge’ or lower altitudinal limits may also shift southwards or upwards, respectively. However, to date, only one report exists of increased diversity within field experimental warming studies, and none exist from the few available long-term monitoring sites. Similarly, while notable plant-cover expansions have been recorded at some localized sites, no clear large-scale vegetation response has been documented within recognized Antarctic biological regions, while organisms living within the vegetation show highly variable responses. There are still many knowledge gaps on this matter for various biological groups across and within Antarctic regions. While it is frequently posited that the potential for climate change-driven range expansion and biodiversity shifts is substantial, the biological responses reported to date indicate that current levels of climate change have not (yet) resulted in large-scale changes in abundance and biodiversity patterns across Antarctica.

According to various sources, Tenochtitlan was founded at the intersection of crags and caves from which two springs flowed. The east–west spring was known as “the fiery waters, the place where the waters burn” (tleatl atlatlayan), whereas the north–south spring was called “the blue and yellow waters” (matlalatl toxpalatl). The same metaphor of blue and yellow waters also appears in the early colonial sources in other contexts. It was associated with gods like Tlazolteotl or Tloque Nahuaque (identified with Tezcatlipoca), who cleansed people with these waters. Likewise, the blue and yellow waters rested in the hands of the tlatoani, who bathed his vassals in them. Finally, they played an essential role in the dedication of newborns to water, which the Spaniards likened to baptism. Although the presence of blue and yellow waters at the Mexica capital is often seen as a reinterpretation of the metaphor atl tlachinolli, “water, burnt land,” symbolizing war, other contexts featuring matlalatl toxpalatl are justice (in the ruler’s duties) and purification. This article proposes a unified interpretation of the Nahuatl metaphor matlalatl toxpalatl, suggesting that it symbolizes completeness, abundance, and the beginning of a new era, as well as carrying the Toltec heritage. Furthermore, this study embeds the metaphor in question in the Mesoamerican conceptual framework.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) modules continue to make a significant contribution to the ongoing process of smooth transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy. However, when exposed to solar irradiation, a PV module suffers significant performance degradation due to rising operating temperature, underscoring the necessity for suitable thermal management strategies. In this review, the different water-based cooling techniques that have been adopted in non-concentrating photovoltaic modules have been identified, classified, reviewed and compared, and the scope for further research has been discussed in detail. The maximum temperature reduction observed with intentional and unintentional cooling techniques was about 50 °C and 15 °C, respectively. The maximum photovoltaic electrical efficiency improvement was about 19% and 15%, respectively, when compared to an uncooled module, due to intentional and unintentional cooling techniques. Unintentional cooling techniques like floating photovoltaics, photovoltaic/thermal collectors, and hybrid photovoltaic-solar still offer benefits such as water evaporation prevention, hot water generation and desalinated water production, respectively. Intentional cooling techniques seem to consume more water and add additional benefits like module cleaning and tertiary wastewater treatment. The least water consumption was observed with the evaporative cooling technique. Potential water quality degradation was a main concern in immersion cooling and floating PV. Except for evaporative and immersion cooling techniques, other intentional techniques require additional energy for water pumping/circulation. Water seepage into the module layers has serious effects on the module’s life time and performance. Suitable research gaps in each water-based module cooling technique have been identified and reported. This review work will provide the necessary information to researchers to select suitable cooling techniques based on the requirement for further investigation and development.