research paper on the environmental crisis

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• Published: 22 June 2021

The widespread and unjust drinking water and clean water crisis in the United States

• J. Tom Mueller   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6223-4505 1 &
• Stephen Gasteyer 2  

Nature Communications volume  12 , Article number:  3544 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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• Water resources

An Addendum to this article was published on 13 June 2023

An Author Correction to this article was published on 13 June 2023

Many households in the United States face issues of incomplete plumbing and poor water quality. Prior scholarship on this issue has focused on one dimension of water hardship at a time, leaving the full picture incomplete. Here we begin to complete this picture by documenting incomplete plumbing and poor drinking water quality for the entire United States, as well as poor wastewater quality for the 39 states and territories where data is reliable. In doing so, we find evidence of a regionally-clustered, socially unequal household water crisis. Using data from the American Community Survey and the Environmental Protection Agency, we show there are 489,836 households lacking complete plumbing, 1,165 community water systems in Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violation, and 9,457 Clean Water Act permittees in Significant Noncompliance. Further, elevated levels of water hardship are associated with rurality, poverty, indigeneity, education, and age—representing a nationwide environmental injustice.

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Introduction

Both in and out of the country, most presume that residents of the United States live with close to universal access to potable water and sanitation. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Tracker, which tracks progress toward meeting Sustainable Development Goal Number 6—calling for universal access to potable water and sanitation for all by 2030—estimates that 99.2% of the US population has continuous access to potable water and 88.9% has access to sanitation 1 . By percentages and the lived experience of most Americans, this appears accurate. The American Community Survey shows that from 2014 to 2018 only an estimated 0.41% of occupied US households lacked access to complete plumbing—meaning access to hot and cold water, a sink with a faucet, and a bath or shower. Although this relative percentage may be low, this 0.41% corresponds to 489,836 households spread unevenly across the country, making the absolute number quite troubling. These numbers become even more dramatic when we broaden our scope to poor household water quality, where the estimates we provide in this paper show the issue affects a far greater share of the population (Table  1 ).

This study builds on a growing body of evidence showing access to plumbing, water quality, and basic sanitation are lacking for a disturbingly large number of US residents by providing a definitive picture of the ongoing household water crisis in the United States. Water and sanitation issues have been a growing concern in the United States, particularly among policy organizations, for the past 20 years 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 . For example, the now-dated Still Living without the Basics report used Census data from 2000 to show that more than 670,000 households (0.64% of households and 1.7 million people) lacked access to complete plumbing facilities 7 . Further, the Water Infrastructure Network published a report in 2004 citing a gap of $23 billion between available funding and needed water and sanitation infrastructure investments 6 . In line with this, the American Society of Civil Engineers has repeatedly given the United States a “D” grade for water infrastructure, and “D-” for wastewater infrastructure in their annual “Infrastructure Report Card” 11 . Although water hardship in the United States has experienced some academic attention, much of the work has become dated and has generally focused on a single dimension of the issue at a time—for example, recent scholarship has focused on exclusively incomplete plumbing 3 , 4 , 9 , water quality 5 , 10 , or on only urban parts of the country 2 . This has left our understanding of the scope of the issue incomplete. In this paper, we estimate and map the full scope of water hardship for the dimensions of incomplete plumbing and poor drinking water quality across the entire United States, while also estimating and mapping the scope of poor wastewater quality for the 39 states where EPA data is reliable, in order to complete this picture.

Prior work from academics and policy groups on dimensions of water hardship has found water access issues pattern along common social inequalities in the United States. The Natural Resources Defense Council released a report demonstrating the disproportionate impact on people of color posed by Safe Drinking Water and Clean Water Act regulatory burdens 12 , which built on similar peer reviewed findings 13 , 14 . Furthermore, both policy papers and peer reviewed studies have analyzed Census data to estimate the population lacking access to complete plumbing facilities and clean water 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 12 . The studies suggest low-income and non-White people—particularly indigenous populations who continue to face injustices related to legacies of settler colonialism 15 —are significantly more likely to have incomplete plumbing and unclean water 3 , 12 . Further, it appears incomplete plumbing may be a disproportionately rural issue, while poor water quality may be a disproportionately urban issue 5 , 9 . Direct comparisons, as we perform here, are needed to fully establish the variability of this inequality between dimensions of water hardship.

The prior scholarship on the inequitable distribution of plumbing and pollution speaks to the well-documented environmental injustices found throughout the United States. Environmental injustice, meaning the absence of “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies” (p. 558) 16 , has been documented in the United States along the social dimensions of income 17 , 18 , poverty 19 , race and ethnicity 20 , 21 , age 22 , education 22 , 23 , and rurality 22 , 24 , 25 . Based on the evidence of prior work on water hardship, it is clear household water access represents an ongoing environmental injustice in the United States 5 . However, the specific dimensions of this injustice, and how they vary between type of water hardship remain largely unknown. To address this gap, we estimate models of water injustice for the previously identified social dimensions at the county level for elevated levels of both incomplete plumbing and poor water quality.

Level of water hardship in the United States

Based upon the most recent available data reported by both the United States Census Bureau via the American Community Survey and the Environmental Protection Agency via Enforcement and Compliance History Online, we find that incomplete plumbing and poor water quality affects millions of Americans as of 2014–2018 and August 2020, respectively (Table  1 ) 26 , 27 . A total of 0.41% of households, or 489,836 households, lacked complete plumbing from 2014–2018 in the United States. Further, 509 counties, representing over 13 million Americans, have an elevated level of the issue where >1% of household do not have complete indoor plumbing (Table  2 ). Thus, even if individuals are not experiencing the issue themselves, they may live in a community where incomplete plumbing is a serious issue.

The portion of the population affected by poor water quality is much greater than that of incomplete plumbing. Poor water quality in our analysis is indicated in two ways, (1) Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violators and (2) Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance. For the first, community water systems are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act and are scored based on their violation and compliance history, those community water systems that are the most problematic are recorded as Serious Violators by the Environmental Protection Agency 27 . Second, any facility that discharges directly into waters in the United States is issued a Clean Water Act permit. Those which “hold a more severe level of environmental threat” are ruled as being in Significant Noncompliance 27 . Importantly, although data on Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violators is available nationwide, the Clean Water Act data reported by the EPA is known to be inaccurate for 13 states. Thus, although we can draw national conclusions for incomplete plumbing and Safe Drinking Water Act violations, our understanding of Clean Water Act violations is limited to the 39 states and territories for which data are available and reliable.

Using these two measures of poor water quality, we find 2.44% of community water systems, a total of 1165, were Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violators and 3.37% of Clean Water Act permittees in the 39 states and territories with accurate data (see Methods for more details), a total of 9457, were in Significant Noncompliance as of 18 August 2020. At the county level, this corresponds to an average of 2.86% of county community water systems being listed as Safe Drinking Water Act Significant Violators and an average of 6.23% of county Clean Water Act permittees being listed as Significant Noncompliers. Due to limitations in the data, we are unable to determine exactly how many individuals are linked to each problematic community water system or Clean Water Act permittee, however, we do find that over 81 million Americans live in counties where >1% of community water systems are listed as Significant Violators, and more than 153 million Americans in the 39 reliable states and territories live in counties where greater than one percent of Clean Water Act permittees are Significant Noncompliers. Thus, although the number of individuals impacted by these issues is certainly far smaller than these totals, a vast number of Americans live in communities where issues of water quality are elevated.

Due to our conservative approach of removing all states with Clean Water Act data issues, we test the sensitivity of our estimates by also calculating supplemental estimates of Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance under two counterfactual scenarios. In the first, we include the data as-is from the EPA for all counties in the 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico, and in the second, we duplicate the counties in the top and bottom 20% of Significant Noncompliance in states without data issues—with the rationale being that the 945 counties removed due to poor data represented roughly 40% of the total counties remaining when problems states were removed. Thus, this attempts to simulate total counts if those removed were balanced between very high and very low levels of noncompliance. Results using all EPA data increase national estimates of Significant Noncompliance (Tables 3 and 4 ), with the total percent of permittees in this status jumping from 3.37% to 6.01%. While the duplication test does raise our estimates, it is not nearly as dramatic, with the percent of permittees in Significant Noncompliance only rising to 3.87%. These results make sense given that the most common reason for data issues was an overreporting of noncompliance within states.

When looking at the issue spatially, we can see that while water hardship affects all parts of the country to some degree, the issues are clustered in space (Figs.  1 – 3 ). Importantly, the clustering varies between each water issue. Incomplete plumbing is clustered in the Four Corners, Alaska, Puerto Rico, the borderlands of Texas, and parts of Appalachia (Fig.  1 ); Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violators are clustered in Appalachia, New Mexico, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Intermountain West (Fig.  2 ); and Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance clearly follows state boundaries—likely speaking to variable monitoring by state. Although spatial representation is limited by the absence of 13 states with inaccurate EPA data, we can still see that Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance is clustered in the Intermountain West, the Upper Midwest, Appalachia, and the lower Mississippi (Fig. 3 ). These regional clusters persist when we include the problem states, which is visible in the map included in the Supplemental Information (Supplementary Figure 1 ).

Households are determined to have incomplete plumbing if they do not have access to hot and cold water, a sink with a faucet, a bath or shower, and—up until 2016—a flush toilet.

Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violators are those community water systems regarded by the Environmental Protection Agency as the most problematic due to violation and compliance history.

All facilities that discharge directly into water of the United States are issued a Clean Water Act permit, those who represent a more severe level of environmental threat due to violations and noncompliance are considered in Significant Noncompliance.

Water injustice modeling

Although we can easily see clustering by space in Figs.  1 through 3 , the maps do not tell us whether or not incomplete plumbing and poor water quality are also clustered by social dimensions, which would represent an environmental injustice. To assess this social clustering, we estimate linear probability models of elevated levels of incomplete plumbing and poor water quality with the previously identified environmental justice dimensions of age, income, poverty, race, ethnicity, education, and rurality as our independent variables. We include these independent variables due to their prevalence within prior work on environmental injustice in both rural and urban areas 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 . Further, although there is not a one-to-one overlap, these variables conceptually map onto the dimensions of the Center for Disease Control Social Vulnerability Index: Socioeconomic Status (i.e. income, poverty, education), Household Composition & Disability (i.e. age), Minority Status & Language (i.e. race and ethnicity), and Housing & Transportation (i.e. rurality) 28 .

For each outcome, we first estimate purely descriptive models with only one dimension of injustice included at a time, and then estimate a full model with all dimensions included. The outcomes are dichotomous measures of whether or not a county had >1% of households with incomplete plumbing, >1% of community water systems listed as Serious Violators, or >1% of Clean Water Act permittees in Significant Noncompliance. All descriptive statistics for the dichotomous outcomes are presented in Table 2 . Descriptive statistics for the continuous independent variables are presented in Supplementary Information (Supplementary Table  1 ). Here we present the outcomes of the purely descriptive models visually in Fig.  4 and discuss the full models in the narrative. Full regression results, including exact 95% confidence intervals and p -values, for all models are available in Supplementary Information (Supplementary Tables  2 , 3 and 4 ).

Different colors for plotted coefficients represent separate blocks of variables. Models are linear probability models with state fixed effects and cluster-robust standard errors at the state level. All tests two-tailed. Dots indicate point estimates and lines represent 95% confidence intervals. Models predicted elevated levels of each dimension of water hardship. For incomplete plumbing this is indicated by >1% of households in a county having incomplete plumbing ( N  = 3219). For Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) Serious Violation this is indicated by >1% of active community water systems being considered Serious Violators ( N  = 3143). For Clean Water Act (CWA) Significant Non-Compliance this is indicated by >1% of Clean Water Act permittees being considered in Significant Non-Compliance ( N  = 2261). Full model results, confidence intervals, and exact p -values available in SI.

We find elevated levels of incomplete plumbing at the county level were significantly ( p  < 0.05) associated with older populations, lower income, higher poverty, greater portions of indigenous people (American Indian, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiian, and Other Pacific Islanders), lower levels of education, and more rural counties (Fig.  4 ). A great deal of these associations persisted in a full model with all dimensions of injustice (Supplementary Table  2 ). The only differences between the full model and the series of purely descriptive models were that income, percent with at least a bachelor’s degree, and non-metropolitan metropolitan adjacency were no longer significantly associated with elevated levels of incomplete plumbing. This indicates that the inequalities in plumbing access along the dimensions of age, poverty, indigeneity, low education, and extreme rurality persist at the county level, even when accounting for the other dimensions of environmental injustice.

The models for elevated levels of Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violators indicated less social inequality than the models for incomplete plumbing. The purely descriptive models found elevated levels of Serious Violators were associated with higher income, higher poverty, and metropolitan counties (Fig.  4 ). The full model had minor variation, with median household income no longer being significant in the model (Supplementary Table  3 ). Thus, the full model shows that the association between elevated levels of Serious Violators and higher poverty and metropolitan status persists even when considering other social dimensions.

We see the fewest indicators of water injustice for elevated levels of Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance—which only include counties within the 39 states and territories with accurate data. In the purely descriptive models, we find older populations, more Latino/a counties, less educated counties, and remote rural counties were significant less likely to have elevated levels of noncompliance (Fig. 4 ). In the full model, the association for education is no longer significant but age, Latino/a, and rurality remain (Supplementary Table 4 ). Similar to our national estimates, we also conducted model sensitivity tests using the same scenarios described above. As shown in Fig. 5 , neither scenario substantively changes our conclusions, with the only changes in significance being for percent Latino/a and percent without a high school diploma—both of which were only marginally significant in our primary models ( p  > 0.01).

Descriptive regression model results. Different colors for plotted coefficients represent separate blocks of variables. Models are linear probability models with state fixed effects and Huber/White/Sandwich cluster-robust standard errors at the state level. All tests are two-tailed. Dots indicate point estimates and lines represent 95% confidence intervals. Models predicted whether or not there were greater than 1% of Clean Water Act permittees being considered in Significant Noncompliance in the county. First model excludes counties in states with CWA data issues ( N  = 2261), second model includes all counties reported by the EPA ( N  = 3206), third model duplicates counties in the top and bottom 10% of CWA Significant Noncompliance within states without data issues ( N  = 3151). Full model results, confidence intervals, and exact p values available in SI.

Our findings demonstrate that the problem of water hardship in the United States is hidden, but not rare. Indeed, millions live in counties where more than 1 out of 100 occupied households lack complete plumbing. Millions more live in places with chronic Safe Drinking Water Act violations and Clean Water Act noncompliance. We present this paper to help sound the alarm of this significant household water crisis in the United States. Although the relative share of Americans experiencing this problem is low, the absolute number of people dealing with incomplete plumbing—a total of 489,836 households—and poor water quality—1165 community water systems nationwide and 9457 Clean Water Act permittees in the 39 accurate states and territories—remains quite high. Further, given the water infrastructure of the United States, consistently deemed as poor by experts 6 , 11 , if action is not taken the situation may only get worse.

These findings are even more concerning when considering that water hardship is spread unevenly across both space and society, reflecting the spatial patterning of social inequality due to settler colonialism, racism, and economic inequality in the United States. Figures  1 , 2 , and 3 document the clear regional clustering of these issues and our models of environmental injustice demonstrate the social inequalities found for this form of hardship. Particularly in the case of incomplete plumbing, we find significant environmental injustice at the county level along the social dimensions of age, income, poverty, indigeneity, education, and rurality. These associations certainly stem from multiple causal pathways—for example associations with indigeneity likely stem from legacies of injustice as well as ongoing policies placing limitations on land use and infrastructure development on American Indian reservations 15 . Remedying these injustices will require careful attention to the root causes of the problem. It is important to note that the signs of injustice for poor water quality were less clear than for incomplete plumbing, with far fewer significant associations. Further, the minimal support for injustice in the case of Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance was evident in all three specifications of counties in our sensitivity tests. Suggesting that the removal of the states with data issues did little to impact coefficient estimates. These differences between dimensions of water hardship highlight the nuance between each of these specific forms of water hardship, and suggest a one-size-fits-all approach to remedying this crisis is unlikely to be effective. This need for place-based policy is made stark when we view the obvious state level differences in Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance in Fig. 3 . A clear direction for future work is to investigate the cause of these notable state-level differences.

The household water access and quality crisis we have identified here is solvable. Policy is needed to specifically address these issues and bring this problem into the spotlight. However, as indicated by the persistently high levels of Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violation and Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance, any policy put in place must be enforceable and strong. As it currently stands, counties with elevated levels of incomplete plumbing and poor water quality in America—which are variously likely to be more indigenous, less educated, older, and poorer—are continuing to slip through the cracks.

Data sources

Data for this analysis were extracted from the American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates for 2014–2018 via Integrated Public Use Microdata Series – National Historic Geographic information System (IPUMS-NHGIS) 26 , and from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) Exporter 27 . Data were extracted at the county level for all 50 states, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico–the two non-state entities with available data. The ACS is an ongoing survey of the United States which documents a wide variety of social statistics ranging from simple population counts to housing characteristics. Due to the staggered sampling structure of the ACS, it takes 5 years for every county to be sampled. Because of this, researchers must use 5-year intervals to ensure complete data coverage. The data from these 5 years are projected into estimates for all counties in the United States for the 5-year period in question. As of this study, 2014–2018 was the most recently available data.

ECHO collates data from EPA-regulated facilities across the United States of America to report compliance, violation, and penalty information for all facilities for the most recent 5-year interval. ECHO data is updated weekly and the data for this paper was extracted on 18 August 2020. This means that the data in our analysis represents the status of each community water system or Clean Water Act permittee, as reported by the EPA, as of 18 August 2020. Only those community water systems or Clean Water Act permittees listed as Active by ECHO were included in this analysis. As ECHO data is at the level of the water system, permittee, or utility, we aggregated data up to the county level.

Safe Drinking Water Act data was geolocated using QGIS 3.10 based upon latitude and longitude. This was done because other geographic identifiers for the Safe Drinking Water Act data were often missing. In line with prior work 4 , 5 , 7 , 8 , and in order to facilitate a cleaner dataset, we only focus on those water systems labeled community water systems for our analysis. Community water systems were geolocated based upon the county in which their latitude and longitude were located, if a community water system had latitude and longitude over water, a nearest neighbor join was used. In total, 1334 out of 49,479 community water systems were dropped because of there being no reported latitude or longitude. Of these, a total of 4.0%, or 54 community waters systems, were reported as in serious violation. It should be noted that the EPA is aware of a small number of water systems in Washington for which ECHO data may be inaccurate. However, since this is a small number and it is not listed as a ‘Primary Data Alert,’ we retain all states in this portion of the analysis. Finally, the EPA is generally aware that there are “inaccuracies and underreporting of some data in this system,” which is listed as a Primary Data Alert 27 . However, due to the lack of specifics, we cannot exclude inaccurate cases. Thus, our analysis should be viewed as reflecting drinking water quality is as reported by the EPA in August of 2020, which may reflect some level of inaccuracy.

Active Clean Water Act permittees were first identified by listed county. This was done because 345,176 out of 350,476 permittees had a county reported. Those without a county reported were located using latitude and longitude in the same manner as community water systems. There were 10 permittees without latitude and longitude or county listed which were excluded from our analysis. Of these, seven were in significant noncompliance and three were not. Due to some Clean Water Act permittees having latitude and longitude placements far away from the United States, those over 100 km from their nearest county were excluded from analysis. Unfortunately, ECHO data for the Clean Water Act data during the study period is inaccurate for 13 states. Although the nature of the inaccuracy varies from state to state, these issues generally stem from difficulties in transferring state data into the federal system. Due to this, these states appear to have far more permittees in Significant Noncompliance than are actually in violation. To address this issue, we removed all counties within these states from our Clean Water Act analysis. The impacted states include Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming 29 . Finally, for community water systems and Clean Water Act permittees, some counties (76 for community water systems and 5 for Clean Water Act permittees) had no reported cases. Those counties were treated as zeroes for cartography and as missing for modeling purposes.

Similar to prior work in this area 4 , 5 , 8 , we restrict our analysis to the scale of the county for reasons related to data limitations and resulting conceptual validity. Although counties are arguably larger in geographic area than ideal for an environmental injustice analysis, if we were to use a smaller unit for which data is available such as the census tract, the conceptual validity of the analysis would be limited due to the apolitical nature of these units. As outlined above, ECHO data is messy and missing many geographic identifiers. What is provided is generally either the county or latitude and longitude. If only the county is provided, then we are constrained to using the county regardless of conceptual validity. However, even when latitude and longitude are provided—which is the case for many observations—the provided point location says nothing about which households the water system or permittee serves or impacts. Due to this, whatever geographic unit we use carries the assumption that those in the unit could be plausibly impacted by the water system or permittee. Given that counties are often responsible for both regulating drinking water, as well as maintaining and providing water infrastructure 30 , we were comfortable with this assumption between point location and presumed spatial impact when using the scale of the county. However, we believe this assumption would have been invalid and untestable for smaller apolitical units for which demographic data is available such as census tracts.

Beyond the issues presented by ECHO data, the county is also the appropriate scale of analysis for this study due to the estimate-based nature of the ACS. ACS estimates are based on a rolling 5-year sample structure and often have very large margins of error. At the census tract level, these standard errors can be massive, especially in rural areas 31 , 32 , 33 . Due to this variation, and the need to include all rural areas in this analysis, the county, where the margins of error are considerably smaller, is the appropriate unit for this study. All of this said, the county is, in fact, a larger unit than often desired or used in environmental justice studies. Studies focused on exclusively urban areas with clearer pathways of impact can and should use smaller units such as census tracts. It will be imperative for future scholarship focused on water hardship across the rural-urban continuum to gain access to reliable data on sub-county political units, as well as data linking water systems to users, to continue documenting and pushing for water justice.

Dependent variables

The dependent variables for this analysis were assessed in both a continuous and dichotomous format. For descriptive results and mapping, continuous measures were used. For models of water injustice, a dichotomous measure which classified counties as either having low levels of the specific water issue or elevated levels of the specific water issue, was used due to the low relative frequency of water access and quality issues relative to the whole United States population. For all three outcomes, we benchmark an elevated level of the issue as what would be viewed as an unacceptable level under United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6.1, which states, “by 2030 achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all” 1 . As this goal focuses on ensuring all people have safe water, we deem a county as having an elevated level of the issue if >1% of households, community water systems, or permittees had incomplete plumbing, were in Significant Violation, or Significant Noncompliance, respectively. Although we could have used an even stricter threshold given the SDG’s emphasis on ensuring access for all people, we use 1% as our cut-off due to its nominal value and ease of interpretation.

For water access, the continuous measure was the percent of households in a county with incomplete household plumbing as reported by the ACS. The ACS currently asks respondents if they have access to hot and cold water, a sink with a faucet, and a bath or shower. Up until 2016, the question also included a flush toilet 34 . As we must use the most recent 2014–2018 5-year estimates to establish full coverage of all counties, this means that incomplete plumbing in this item may, or may not include a flush toilet depending on when the specific county was sampled. The dichotomous version of this variable benchmarked elevated levels of incomplete plumbing as whether or not 1% or more of households in a county had incomplete plumbing.

Water quality was assessed via both community water systems from the Safe Drinking Water Act, and from permit data via the Clean Water Act. For Safe Drinking Water Act data, the continuous measure was the percent of community water systems within a county classified as a Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violator at time of data extraction. The EPA assigns point values of either 1, 5, or 10 based upon the severity of violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act. A Serious Violator is one who has “an aggregate score of at least eleven points as a result of some combination of: unresolved more serious violations (such as maximum contaminant level violations related to acute contaminants), multiple violations (health-based, monitoring and reporting, public notification and/or other violations), and/or continuing violations” 27 . The dichotomous measure benchmarked elevated rates of Safe Drinking Water Act Significant Violation as whether or not >1% of county community water systems were classified as Serious Violators.

For Clean Water Act permit data, the continuous measure was the percent of permit holders listed as in Significant Noncompliance at the time of data extraction. Significant Noncompliance in the Clean Water Act refers to those permit holders who may pose a “more severe level of environmental threat” and is based upon both pollution levels and reporting compliance 27 . The dichotomous measure again set the threshold for elevated levels of poor water quality at whether or not >1% of Clean Water Act permittees in a county were listed as in Significant Noncompliance at time of data extraction.

Independent variables

The independent variables we include in models of water injustice are those frequently shown to be related to environmental injustice in the United States. These include age, income, poverty, race, ethnicity, education, and rurality 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 . Age was included as median age. Income was included as median household income. Poverty was the poverty rate of the county as determined by the official poverty measure of the United States 35 . Race and ethnicity was included as percent non-Latino/a Black, percent non-Latino/a indigenous, and percent Latino/a. Because the focus was on indigeneity, percent American Indian or Alaska Native was collapsed with Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. We did not include percent non-Latino/a white due to issues of multicollinearity. Finally, rurality was included as a three-category county indicator of metropolitan, non-metropolitan metropolitan-adjacent, and non-metropolitan remote, as determined by the Office of Management and Budget in 2010 36 . The OMB determines a county is metropolitan if it has a core urban area of 50,000 or more people, or is connected to a core metropolitan county by a 25% or greater share of commuting 36 . A non-metropolitan county is simply any county not classified as metropolitan. Non-metropolitan metropolitan adjacent counties are those which immediately border a metropolitan county, and non-metropolitan remote counties are those that do not.

Water injustice modeling approach

Water injustice was assessed by estimating linear probability models for the three dichotomous outcome variables with state fixed effects to control for the visible state level heterogeneity and differences in policy, reporting, and enforcement (e.g. the clear state boundary effects in Fig.  3 ). We employ the conventional Huber/White/Sandwich cluster-robust standard errors at the state level—which account for heteroskedasticity while also producing a consistent standard error estimate in-light of the lack of independence found between counties in the same state. All modeling was performed in Stata 16.0 and mapping was performed in QGIS 3.10. We assessed all full models for multicollinearity via condition index and VIF values and the independent variables had an acceptable condition index of 5.48 for incomplete plumbing and Safe Drinking Water Act models and 5.63 for Clean Water Act models, well below the conservative cut-off of 15, as well as VIF values of <10. We initially included percent non-Latino/a white as an independent variable, but removed the item due to unacceptably high condition index levels (>20). All indications of statistical significance are at the p  < 0.05 level and 95% confidence intervals and exact p -values of all estimates are provided in Supplementary Information. Each dependent variable was analyzed through a series of six models. First, we estimated separate purely descriptive models, where the only independent variables included were those associated with that specific dimension and the state fixed effects, for all five dimensions of environmental injustice. After estimating these five models, we estimated a full model including all social dimensions at once.

The reason for this approach was to ensure that we provided a robust descriptive understanding of the on-the-ground social patterns of water hardship, in addition to a full model showing the strongest social correlates of this issue. For example, if when we only included income variables we found that incomplete plumbing is less likely in counties with higher median incomes, but this effect goes away when we include other social variables, this does not remove the fact that there is an unequal distribution of incomplete plumbing by income on-the-ground. All that it means is that this income effect does not persist over and above the other social dimensions of environmental injustice. It may be that once other dimensions such as structural racism, captured by race and ethnicity variables, are considered, income is no longer a significant predictor. However, at a pure associational level, incomplete plumbing would still be unequally distributed by income on-the-ground. In fact, this is exactly what we find for incomplete plumbing (Supplementary Table  2 ). Due to this, both the pure descriptive and full models are needed for full understanding. Complete tables of all results are presented in the Supplementary Information File (Supplementary Tables  1 through 4 ).

Sensitivity tests

Due to our conservative approach to remove all problem states from the Clean Water Act portion of our analysis, we conducted a series of sensitivity tests wherein we generated national estimates of Significant Noncompliance, as well as models of elevated Significant Noncompliance under two scenarios (Supplementary Tables 5 and 6 ). In the first scenario we include all data reported by the EPA, meaning that we use all data for the 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico, regardless of any EPA data flags. In the second scenario, we replaced the data lost when dropping states by duplicating the counties in the top and bottom 20% of significant violations in the remaining counties. The top and bottom 20% was chosen because the 945 counties removed when the 13 states were dropped was roughly equal to 40% of the remaining 2262 counties. This counterfactual allows us to get closer to a plausible estimate of the absolute scope of CWA Significant Noncompliance by adopting a scenario where the counties dropped in problem states were either very high, or very low in terms of Significant Noncompliance. Functionally, duplicating the bottom 20% posed a challenge because the bottom 30% of counties had zero permittees in Significant Noncompliance. This zero-bias is one of the primary reasons why our outcome variable was dichotomized. To address this, we randomly selected two-thirds of these counties for duplication using a seeded pseudorandom number generator in Stata. Following duplication of cases, all estimates and models were generated in the same manner as the primary models of this study.

Reporting summary

Further information on research design is available in the  Nature Research Reporting Summary linked to this article.

Data availability

The raw and geolocated datasets are publicly available on the Open Science Framework project for this study at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ZPQR9 ( https://osf.io/zpqr9/ ).

Code availability

Analysis code is available on the Open Science Framework project for this study at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ZPQR9 ( https://osf.io/zpqr9/ ). As the raw data was not geolocated using a code-based operation, code for this portion of the analysis is not available. However, the raw data is posted, and should researchers wish they will be able to use our description provided here to replicate geolocation using the GIS software of their choice. All other elements of the analysis are easily replicated via our provided code. As the both the raw and geolocated datasets are provided, replication of our analysis should be straightforward.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Tom Dietz, Lauren Mullenbach, Matthew Brooks, and Jan Beecher for their feedback on this manuscript. They would also like to thank Colleen Keltz at the Washington State Department of Ecology for alerting us to the issues with Clean Water Act data for Washington and other states.

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Conceptualization: J.T.M. and S.G.; methodology: J.T.M.; formal analysis: J.T.M.; data curation: J.T.M.; writing- original draft preparation: J.T.M. and S.G.; writing – review and editing: J.T.M. and S.G.; visualization: J.T.M.

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Mueller, J.T., Gasteyer, S. The widespread and unjust drinking water and clean water crisis in the United States. Nat Commun 12 , 3544 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23898-z

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Covid-19, climate change, and the environment: a sustainable, inclusive, and resilient global recovery

Read our latest coverage of the climate emergency.

• Related content
• Peer review
• Nicholas Stern ,
• IG Patel , professor of economics and government and chair ,
• Bob Ward , policy and communications director
• Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
• r.e.ward{at}lse.ac.uk

We are at a critical moment in history, facing growing crises in climate change, biodiversity, and environmental degradation—as well as covid-19. But we also have an enormous opportunity to transform the global economy and usher in an era of greater wellbeing and prosperity, write Nick Stern and Bob Ward

The covid-19 pandemic has shown how vulnerable and exposed the world is to global threats. The effects of the disease and the measures that have been taken to control it have had serious consequences for lives and livelihoods. In addition to the tragic toll of illness and death, economies have been hit hard, particularly in developing countries.

Continuing to tackle the disease must be the priority, particularly by ensuring access to vaccines and treatments in all countries. Rich countries have a critical responsibility not just to safeguard their own populations but to support the distribution of vaccines to developing countries.

Every country will remain potentially exposed and vulnerable to the SARS-CoV-2 virus as long as it is able to spread rapidly through unvaccinated populations in any part of the world. Common humanity and self-interest point in the same direction.

Governments have tried to limit and reverse the economic damage through rescue and recovery packages. The rescue efforts have understandably focused on protecting existing jobs and companies, but recovery offers the chance to accelerate the transition towards a more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient form of economic development and growth.

A report prepared at the request of the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, for the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, in June 2021 laid out the case for an investment led recovery from the pandemic. 1 It pointed out that an increase in annual investment of $1tn (£0.7tn; €0.9tn), equivalent to 2% of the collective national output, across the G7 countries over the coming decade and beyond would drive strong growth out of the economic difficulties arising from the pandemic and from the relatively low levels of investment, particularly since the financial crisis in 2008-9, which have been a major cause of sluggish growth in many rich countries over the past decade.

Most of this increase in investment will be made by the private sector, but governments also need to lead by example through their spending programmes both to kickstart growth and play their parts in crucial infrastructure investment, particularly in zero carbon and climate resilient energy, transport, and buildings.

The rich countries should also work to support investment in developing countries to foster sustainable, resilient, and inclusive development and growth. Most global investment in the next two decades will be in emerging markets and developing countries, and the nature of that investment will shape the future for us all in terms of wellbeing and its sustainability.

These investments in both developed and developing countries should aim both to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to improve resilience against the effects of climate change that cannot now be avoided. Many relevant investments spur development, reduce emissions, and strengthen resilience. There are examples across all sectors: protecting and restoring mangroves; restoring degraded land; expanding and protecting forests; improving public transport; installing decentralised solar energy systems; and constructing and retrofitting buildings to make them more efficient and resilient. All of these can boost economic development, climate change mitigation, and adaptation.

Central to these changes will be extra finance, much of it concessional, from the national and multilateral development banks. This will be crucial to reducing and managing risk for both private and public investment. The scale of the challenge implies that its scale must be expanded.

Growing effects of climate change

The growing consequences of climate change have been all too visible across the world this year with severe heatwaves, floods, wildfires, and tropical cyclones. A new assessment of the science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in August 2021, concluded that there is now a clear link between rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. 2 It states: “Climate change is already affecting every inhabited region across the globe, with human influence contributing to many observed changes in weather and climate extremes.”

Although the IPCC’s review of the effects of climate change on people and wildlife is not due to be published until next year, losses are clearly mounting around the world. One of the great injustices of climate change is that the poorest people around the world are often most exposed and vulnerable to the effects, even though they are least responsible for the driving cause: the rise in concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The most recent Human Development Report, 3 published by the United Nations Development Programme in December 2020, pointed out that climate change has played a large role in reducing average incomes, particularly in low income countries, increasing the number of people experiencing hunger and expanding the number of people affected by climate and weather disasters.

Climate change has been making it more difficult to achieve many of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), even before the pandemic. In his 2021 annual progress report on the SDGs, 4 the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said: “The pandemic related economic downturn has pushed between 119 and 124 million more people into extreme poverty in 2020, further compounding challenges to poverty eradication such as conflict, climate change, and natural disasters.”

The mounting damage from climate change is clearly harming efforts to overcome poverty and raise living standards, particularly in developing countries. Global mean surface temperature is already more than 1°C above its pre-industrial level. A special report by the IPCC in October 2018 provided a detailed review of the evidence about the risks of warming exceeding 1.5°C. 5 There is a growing consensus that those risks pose an unacceptable threat.

The IPCC report concluded that, to prevent warming exceeding 1.5°C by the end of the century, greenhouse gas emissions would need to be cut sharply over the coming decades, with net carbon dioxide emissions reduced to zero by 2050—this means that any residual emissions from human activities would need to be compensated by equivalent removals from the atmosphere by planting more vegetation or through other artificial methods involving carbon capture, use, and storage. Many countries have now pledged to reach net zero annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.

New form of economic development and growth

Greater understanding of the urgency required to cut emissions has been accompanied by mounting evidence that it does not mean sacrificing economic development and growth. Annual emissions by the United Kingdom, for example, fell by 43.8% between 1990 and 2019, 6 whereas its gross domestic product rose by 78% over the same period. 7 This is a critically important insight, particularly for developing countries that understandably view economic growth as essential to improving the lives of their citizens. The increase in economic activity is usually accompanied by more jobs, higher incomes, and less hunger, as well as potentially higher tax revenues for governments to invest in public services, including health and education.

Some people argue that greenhouse gas emissions can only be eliminated by killing economic growth. But this is analytically incorrect. There is nothing inherent about economic growth that requires emissions. Energy can be generated from sources other than fossil fuels, which are the main driver of emissions. Furthermore, commitment to the new path for economic development and growth is already generating rapid innovation and cost reduction for most countries. Round-the-clock renewable electricity is now cheaper than fossil fuel electricity in many places, for example. Electric vehicles are more efficient than those driven by internal combustion engines. Resource efficiency (including the circular economy) improves productivity. And progress is rapid.

As countries emerge from the pandemic, investments in the rapid transition away from fossil fuels towards cleaner sources of energy will have multiple economic benefits. It will, for example, drastically reduce the number of deaths from air pollution, which kills more than seven million people worldwide every year, according to the World Health Organization, 8 and knocks several percentage points off economic output, 9 particularly in countries like China and India.

Investments in sustainable infrastructure, such as renewable energy and electric trains, can improve the economic competitiveness of countries and transform cities into more attractive places where people can live, move, and breathe more easily. Infrastructure that is not sustainable has the opposite effect—creating more pollution, waste, and congestion.

An investment led recovery that accelerates the transformation to sustainable, inclusive, and resilient economic development and growth will not only avoid the worst potential consequences of climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation, but will also create meaningful job opportunities and improve the lives of people around the world. A new form of clean, sustainable, efficient and inclusive development and growth is now in our hands. It will involve strong investment and some dislocation. It is important that the transition is, and is seen to be, just. All this will require strong commitment and leadership. But if offers us a much better future.

Biographies

Nick Stern is a cross bench member of the UK House of Lords. He has been president of the British Academy, the Royal Economic Society, and the European Economic Association. He was head of the UK Government Economic Service from 2003 to 2007 and head of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change , published in 2006. He was chief economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development between 1994 and 1999, and chief economist and senior vice president at the World Bank between 2000 and 2003.

Robert Ward is deputy chair of the London Climate Change Partnership and a fellow of the Geological Society, the Royal Geographical Society, and the Energy Institute. He was previously director of public policy at Risk Management Solutions between 2006 and 2008, and senior manager for policy communication at the Royal Society between 1999 and 2006. He has also worked as a freelance science journalist

Commissioned, not externally peer reviewed.

Competing interests: We have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare the following: NS oversaw the preparation of the G7 report by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, which he has chaired since its foundation in 2008, and RW, who has been policy and communications director at the institute since its foundation, was one of the writing team.

This article is made freely available for use in accordance with BMJ's website terms and conditions for the duration of the covid-19 pandemic or until otherwise determined by BMJ. You may use, download and print the article for any lawful, non-commercial purpose (including text and data mining) provided that all copyright notices and trade marks are retained.

• ↵ Stern N. G7 leadership for sustainable, resilient, and inclusive economic recovery and growth: An independent report requested by the UK Prime Minister for the G7. London: Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. June 2021. https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/publication/g7-leadership-for-sustainable-resilient-and-inclusive-economic-recovery-and-growth/ .
• ↵ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate change 2021: the physical science basis. 2021. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/#FullReport
• ↵ United Nations Development Programme. Human development report 2020. 2020. http://hdr.undp.org/en/2020-report
• ↵ United Nations Secretary-General. Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals: report of the secretary-general. 30 April 2021. https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/files/report/2021/secretary-general-sdg-report-2021--EN.pdf
• ↵ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Global warming of 1.5°C: 2018. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/
• ↵ Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy. 2019 UK greenhouse gas emissions, final figures. 2021. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/957887/2019_Final_greenhouse_gas_emissions_statistical_release.pdf
• ↵ Office for National Statistics. Gross domestic product: chained volume measures: seasonally adjusted £m. 2021. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/timeseries/abmi/pn2
• ↵ World Health Organization. Air pollution. 2021. https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1
• ↵ World Bank, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. The cost of air pollution: strengthening the economic case for action. 2016. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/781521473177013155/pdf/108141-REVISED-Cost-of-PollutionWebCORRECTEDfile.pdf

2019 Best Papers published in the Environmental Science journals of the Royal Society of Chemistry

In 2019, the Royal Society of Chemistry published 180, 196 and 293 papers in Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts , Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology , and Environmental Science: Nano , respectively. These papers covered a wide range of topics in environmental science, from biogeochemical cycling to water reuse to nanomaterial toxicity. And, yes, we also published papers on the topic of the environmental fate, behavior, and inactivation of viruses. 1–10 We are extremely grateful that so many authors have chosen our journals as outlets for publishing their research and are equally delighted at the high quality of the papers that we have had the privilege to publish.

Our Associate Editors, Editorial Boards, and Advisory Boards were enlisted to nominate and select the best papers from 2019. From this list, the three Editors-in-Chief selected an overall best paper from the entire Environmental Science portfolio. It is our pleasure to present the winners of the Best Papers in 2019 to you, our readers.

Overall Best Paper

In this paper, Johansson et al. examine sea spray aerosol as a potential transport vehicle for perfluoroalkyl carboxylic and sulfonic acids. The surfactant properties of these compounds are well known and, in fact, key to many of the technical applications for which they are used. The fact that these compounds are enriched at the air–water interface makes enrichment in sea spray aerosols seem reasonable. Johansson et al. systematically tested various perfluoroalkyl acids enrichment in aerosols under conditions relevant to sea spray formation, finding that longer chain lengths lead to higher aerosol enrichment factors. They augmented their experimental work with a global model, which further bolstered the conclusion that global transport of perfluoroalkyl acids by sea spray aerosol is and will continue to be an important process in determining the global distribution of these compounds.

Journal Best Papers

Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts

First Runner-up Best Paper: Yamakawa, Takami, Takeda, Kato, Kajii, Emerging investigator series: investigation of mercury emission sources using Hg isotopic compositions of atmospheric mercury at the Cape Hedo Atmosphere and Aerosol Monitoring Station (CHAAMS), Japan , Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts , 2019, 21 , 809–818, DOI: 10.1039/C8EM00590G .

Second Runner-up Best Paper: Avery, Waring, DeCarlo, Seasonal variation in aerosol composition and concentration upon transport from the outdoor to indoor environment , Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts , 2019, 21 , 528–547, DOI: 10.1039/C8EM00471D .

Best Review Article: Cousins, Ng, Wang, Scheringer, Why is high persistence alone a major cause of concern? Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts , 2019, 21 , 781–792, DOI: 10.1039/C8EM00515J .

Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology

First Runner-up Best Paper: Yang, Lin, Tse, Dong, Yu, Hoffmann, Membrane-separated electrochemical latrine wastewater treatment , Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 51–59, DOI: 10.1039/C8EW00698A .

Second Runner-up Best Paper: Genter, Marks, Clair-Caliot, Mugume, Johnston, Bain, Julian, Evaluation of the novel substrate RUG™ for the detection of Escherichia coli in water from temperate (Zurich, Switzerland) and tropical (Bushenyi, Uganda) field sites , Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 1082–1091, DOI: 10.1039/C9EW00138G .

Best Review Article: Okoffo, O’Brien, O’Brien, Tscharke, Thomas, Wastewater treatment plants as a source of plastics in the environment: a review of occurrence, methods for identification, quantification and fate , Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 1908–1931, DOI: 10.1039/C9EW00428A .

Environmental Science: Nano

First Runner-up Best Paper: Janković, Plata, Engineered nanomaterials in the context of global element cycles , Environ. Sci.: Nano , 2019, 6 , 2697–2711, DOI: 10.1039/C9EN00322C .

Second Runner-up Best Paper: González-Pleiter, Tamayo-Belda, Pulido-Reyes, Amariei, Leganés, Rosal, Fernández-Piñas, Secondary nanoplastics released from a biodegradable microplastic severely impact freshwater environments , Environ. Sci.: Nano , 2019, 6 , 1382–1392, DOI: 10.1039/C8EN01427B .

Best Review Article: Lv, Christie, Zhang, Uptake, translocation, and transformation of metal-based nanoparticles in plants: recent advances and methodological challenges , Environ. Sci.: Nano , 2019, 6 , 41–59, DOI: 10.1039/C8EN00645H .

Congratulations to the authors of these papers and a hearty thanks to all of our authors. As one can clearly see from the papers listed above, environmental science is a global effort and we are thrilled to have contributions from around the world. In these challenging times, we are proud to publish research that is not only great science, but also relevant to the health of the environment and the public. Finally, we also wish to extend our thanks to our community of editors, reviewers, and readers. We look forward to another outstanding year of Environmental Science , reading the work generated not just from our offices at home, but also from back in our laboratories and the field.

Kris McNeill, Editor-in-Chief

Paige Novak, Editor-in-Chief

Peter Vikesland, Editor-in-Chief

• A. B Boehm, Risk-based water quality thresholds for coliphages in surface waters: effect of temperature and contamination aging, Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts , 2019, 21 , 2031–2041,   10.1039/C9EM00376B .
• L. Cai, C. Liu, G. Fan, C Liu and X. Sun, Preventing viral disease by ZnONPs through directly deactivating TMV and activating plant immunity in Nicotiana benthamiana , Environ. Sci.: Nano , 2019, 6 , 3653–3669,   10.1039/C9EN00850K .
• L. W. Gassie, J. D. Englehardt, N. E. Brinkman, J. Garland and M. K. Perera, Ozone-UV net-zero water wash station for remote emergency response healthcare units: design, operation, and results, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 1971–1984,   10.1039/C9EW00126C .
• L. M. Hornstra, T. Rodrigues da Silva, B. Blankert, L. Heijnen, E. Beerendonk, E. R. Cornelissen and G. Medema, Monitoring the integrity of reverse osmosis membranes using novel indigenous freshwater viruses and bacteriophages, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 1535–1544,   10.1039/C9EW00318E .
• A. H. Hassaballah, J. Nyitrai, C. H. Hart, N. Dai and L. M. Sassoubre, A pilot-scale study of peracetic acid and ultraviolet light for wastewater disinfection, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 1453–1463,   10.1039/C9EW00341J .
• W. Khan, J.-Y. Nam, H. Woo, H. Ryu, S. Kim, S. K. Maeng and H.-C. Kim, A proof of concept study for wastewater reuse using bioelectrochemical processes combined with complementary post-treatment technologies, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 1489–1498,   10.1039/C9EW00358D .
• J. Heffron, B. McDermid and B. K. Mayer, Bacteriophage inactivation as a function of ferrous iron oxidation, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 1309–1317,   10.1039/C9EW00190E .
• S. Torii, T. Hashimoto, A. T. Do, H. Furumai and H. Katayama, Impact of repeated pressurization on virus removal by reverse osmosis membranes for household water treatment, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 910–919,   10.1039/C8EW00944A .
• J. Miao, H.-J. Jiang, Z.-W. Yang, D.-y. Shi, D. Yang, Z.-Q. Shen, J. Yin, Z.-G. Qiu, H.-R. Wang, J.-W. Li and M. Jin, Assessment of an electropositive granule media filter for concentrating viruses from large volumes of coastal water, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. , 2019, 5 , 325–333,   10.1039/C8EW00699G .
• K. L. Nelson, A. B. Boehm, R. J. Davies-Colley, M. C. Dodd, T. Kohn, K. G. Linden, Y. Liu, P. A. Maraccini, K. McNeill, W. A. Mitch, T. H. Nguyen, K. M. Parker, R. A. Rodriguez, L. M. Sassoubre, A. I. Silverman, K. R. Wigginton and R. G. Zepp, Sunlight mediated inactivation of health relevant microorganisms in water: a review of mechanisms and modeling approaches, Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts , 2018, 20 , 1089–1122,   10.1039/C8EM00047F .

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The Flint Water Crisis: A Coordinated Public Health Emergency Response and Recovery Initiative

Perri zeitz ruckart.

Lead Poisoning Prevention and Environmental Health Tracking Branch, Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia

Adrienne S. Ettinger

Mona hanna-attisha.

Pediatric Public Health Initiative and Department of Pediatrics and Human Development, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, Flint, Michigan

Nicole Jones

Department of Pediatrics and Human Development/Division of Public Health, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan

Stephanie I. Davis

Office of Science, National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia

Patrick N. Breysse

National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia

The City of Flint was already distressed because of decades of financial decline when an estimated 140 000 individuals were exposed to lead and other contaminants in drinking water. In April 2014, Flint’s drinking water source was changed from Great Lakes’ Lake Huron (which was provided by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department) to the Flint River without necessary corrosion control treatment to prevent lead release from pipes and plumbing. Lead exposure can damage children’s brains and nervous systems, lead to slow growth and development, and result in learning, behavior, hearing, and speech problems. After the involvement of concerned residents and independent researchers, Flint was re-connected to the Detroit water system on October 16, 2015. A federal emergency was declared in January 2016.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided assistance and support for response and recovery efforts including coordinating effective health messaging; assessing lead exposure; providing guidance on blood lead screening protocols; and identifying and linking community members to appropriate follow-up services. In response to the crisis in Flint, Congress funded the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to establish a federal advisory committee; enhance Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program activities; and support a voluntary Flint lead exposure registry. The registry, funded through a grant to Michigan State University, is designed to identify eligible participants and ensure robust registry data; monitor health, child development, service utilization, and ongoing lead exposure; improve service delivery to lead-exposed individuals; and coordinate with other community and federally funded programs in Flint. The registry is also collaborating to make Flint “lead-free” and to share best practices with other communities.

Discussion:

The Flint water crisis highlights the need for improved risk communication strategies, and environmental health infrastructure, enhanced surveillance, and primary prevention to identify and respond to environmental threats to the public’s health. Collecting data is important to facilitate action and decision making to prevent lead poisoning. Partnerships can help guide innovative strategies for primary lead prevention, raise awareness, extend outreach and communication efforts, and promote a shared sense of ownership.

Prior to the decision by a state-appointed emergency manager to switch the water source to the Flint River in an effort to cut costs, the residents of Flint were impacted by many factors that negatively affected a wide range of health and development risks and quality-of-life outcomes. 1 Once an industrial center with the highest median income for young workers in the nation, 2 Flint had been in crisis for decades due to multiple socioeconomic factors such as disinvestment, unemployment, racism, poverty, violence, food insecurity, and depopulation. About 43% of the population lived in poverty, 45% of homes were renter-occupied, only 11% of the population had a bachelor’s degree or higher, and almost 13% of persons younger than 65 years were without health insurance. 3 In addition, just as in many low-income and minority urban centers, children in Flint were already at increased risk for lead exposure because of older and deteriorated housing stock and poor nutrition. 4

Flint water crisis

Recognizing no safe level of exposure to lead has been identified, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) health-based maximum contaminant-level goal for lead in water is 0 parts per billion (ppb). 5 However, the non–health-based action level of 15 ppb is set as a feasibility goal: 90% of a water system’s samples must be below 15 ppb to comply with the Lead and Copper Rule. 6 When Flint’s drinking was switched from treated Lake Huron water pro-vided by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River water source (FWS) on April 25, 2014, it was not treated properly to prevent corrosion. Lead levels in Flint tap water increased above the action level of 15 ppb. 7 Protective scales inside pipes can destabilize if corrosion inhibitors are not used. This mobilizes lead from leaded pipes and lead, iron, zinc, and cadmium from galvanized pipes, thus causing the concentration of lead in water to increase. 8 Flint’s untreated corrosive water flowed through an aging and oversized water distribution system that was built, like most cities, prior to the restriction of lead in service lines (1986) and lead in brass fixtures (2014). 9

Childhood lead exposure can result in damage to the brain and nervous system; slowed growth and development; learning and behavior problems; and hearing and speech problems. 6 A well-studied neurotoxin, there is no known safe level of lead in children as even very low levels of lead can result in adverse health effects. 10 In adults, exposure to lead can increase risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, kidney disease, and reduced fertility. 6

Shortly after the switch to the FWS in April 2014, residents raised concerns about the color, odor, and taste of their water as well as concerns about rashes they attributed to the water change. 11 In response to bacterial detection, the City of Flint issued boil water advisories in August and September 2014 while also boosting chlorine levels. In October 2014, the General Motors assembly plant in Flint announced that it was switching from the FWS back to Lake Huron water because of the corrosive effect the FWS water was having on its engine parts. 12 On January 2, 2015, the city issued a water advisory because total trihalomethane concentrations, which are known carcinogenic disinfection by-products, exceeded federal limits. In January 2015, testing by the University of Michigan-Flint revealed elevated lead levels in their water. 13 Two outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease in 2014–2015, in which 12 people died and 79 people be-came ill, coincided with the water source switch. Re-searchers eventually linked 80% of the Legionnaires’ cases to a decline in chlorine levels in the FWS secondary to iron corrosion. 14 Residents continued to raise concerns about the quality of the water prompting the involvement of journalists, the EPA, and independent researchers. 11

In September 2015, environmental engineer Dr Marc Edwards from Virginia Tech, working with citizen scientists, reported that residential water samples throughout Flint had high lead levels. Lead in one sample collected after 45 seconds of flushing was greater than 1000 ppb, which is almost 70 times the EPA drinking water action level. 15 On September 24, 2015, Dr Mona Hanna-Attisha, a Flint pediatrician at Hurley Medical Center and Michigan State University (MSU), publicly reported an increase in the percentage of blood lead levels (BLLs) of 5 μ g/dL or greater (the CDC reference value) in children 5 years of age and younger after the water switch and urged for precautions including a health advisory and a return to treated Great Lakes water. 4 , 11 The following day, the City of Flint issued a lead advisory urging residents to flush their tap water and use only cold water for drinking, cooking, and making baby formula. The Genesee County Health Department, where Flint is located, declared a public health emergency on October 1, 2015. After 18 months on untreated corrosive water, Flint was reconnected to Great Lakes water provided by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department on October 16, 2015. However, the severely corroded pipes and plumbing continued to release lead into the drinking water. 16 – 18

Emergency response

The Flint mayor declared a state of emergency on December 14, 2015, followed by the governor of Michigan declaring a state of emergency for Genesee County on January 5, 2016. 19 , 20 President Obama is-sued an emergency declaration on January 16, 2016, and the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) was designated as the principal federal agency of the Unified Coordination Group for response and recovery efforts. 21 The HHS, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (CDC/ATSDR), worked with the city and the state to develop a response and recovery plan, and CDC’s Emergency Operations Center was activated from February 1, 2016, to March 15, 2016, to coordinate the response.

The CDC/ATSDR assisted the state of Michigan with (1) coordinating effective health messaging; (2) assessing lead exposure in the community; (3) providing guidance on blood lead screening protocols; and (4) identifying and linking community members to appropriate educational, social, and environmental follow-up services. The CDC staff assisted the Gene-see County Health Department with processing BLL tests and contacting families with children who had elevated lead levels to ensure that they received necessary services. The CDC conducted a Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response (CASPER), which is an epidemiologic tool designed to quickly collect information about a community’s needs following a disaster, during May 17 to 19, 2016, to evaluate potential behavioral and physical health effects and assess water-related resource needs, barriers to accessing care, and risk communication. 22 More than 50% of households reported that at least 1 member had “more behavioral health concerns than usual” since October 2015 and that behavioral health services were needed. About 50% of households re-ported that at least 1 member believed that his or her physical health was worse because of the water source switch with skin rashes being the most common condition reported.

As part of the Federal Unified Coordination Group, the CDC/ATSDR investigated reports of rashes and other skin conditions that residents attributed to the water in order to better understand and characterize the cases, explore possible causes, and make recommendations for interventions. 23 Between January 29 and May 11, 2016, individuals previously exposed to the FWS with current or worsening onset of rashes after October 15, 2015, were (1) identified and administered a questionnaire to assess the characteristics of the rashes and tap water usage; (2) asked to provide tap water samples from their homes; and (3) evaluated by a local dermatologist who was blinded to the water-quality data. Investigators also reviewed historical water-quality data reported by the FWS. The investigation found that more than 77% of respondents reported that their rash began at the same time they noticed changes in water color, odor, or taste. Dermatologists classified rashes in about 80% of respondents as being possibly related to the tap water. However, no water-quality parameters at the time of the investigation (after switch back to treated water) were identified as a possible cause of the rashes. In addition, the water samples did not show any clear pattern of contamination or specific water-quality parameters in sampled homes.

Water testing conducted by EPA in spring 2016 confirmed that National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) International–approved point-of-use filters effectively removed or reduced lead to levels below 15 ppb. Despite unfiltered water-lead level levels that exceeded the NSF filter clearance limit (150 ppb), some by several orders of magnitude, most filtered water samples had concentrations less than 1 ppb. 24 Water samples were collected from locations likely to have lead-contaminated water (eg, buildings with lead service lines [LSLs] and galvanized plumbing) and from locations with vulnerable populations (eg, residences with pregnant mothers and/or children). These results confirmed the results of previous testing conducted by Virginia Tech and NSF International.

To validate the earlier conclusions of Hanna-Attisha et al 4 and to help guide appropriate interventions, the CDC/ATSDR analyzed BLLs of 5 μ g/dL or greater of a larger sample size derived from Michigan’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program (CLPPP) surveillance data. Among 7306 children younger than 6 years of age before, during, and after the switch in water source, the percentage of BLLs of 5 μ g/dL or greater increased from 3.1% to 5.0% during the early period after the switch (defined as the time after the switch to FWS, but before the water advisory was issued [April 25, 2014, to January 2, 2015]) compared with before the switch (defined as April 25, 2013, to April 24, 2014). 25 After the water switched back to Lake Huron water, the percentage of BLLs of 5 μ g/dL or greater returned to levels similar to before the switch. To determine risk of ongoing lead exposure after emergency declaration, the CDC recommended that all Flint children younger than 6 years receive blood lead testing if they had not had a blood lead test since October 2015. 25 The CDC also recommended that children with BLLs of 5 μ g/dL or greater should receive outreach and individual case management focusing on water and other potential sources of lead exposure.

Long-term recovery efforts

As a result of the sustained community involvement, intense media attention, and support from policy makers, the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act of 2016 was passed. This legislation authorized the HHS agencies to take actions to sup-port the Flint recovery and put infrastructure in place to assist lead poisoning prevention programs. 26 The CDC received $35 million to (1) establish a new federal advisory committee; (2) enhance CLPPP activities; and (3) support the development of a voluntary Flint lead exposure registry.

The 2016 Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act authorized the Secretary of HHS to establish a new Lead Exposure and Prevention Advisory Committee (LEPAC) under the requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act of October 2, 1972. The Lead Exposure and Prevention Advisory Committee is charged with reviewing federal programs and services available to lead-exposed individuals and communities; reviewing current research on lead poisoning to identify additional research needs; reviewing and identifying best practices, or the need for best practices, regarding lead screening and the prevention of lead poisoning; and identifying effective services for individuals and communities affected by lead exposure. 27

In addition, the CDC received funding to enhance CLPPP activities that allowed the CDC to support 14 newly funded state and local health departments through cooperative agreements. These awards are aimed at strengthening blood lead testing, surveillance, processes to link lead-exposed children to appropriate services, and population-based interventions.

A 4-year, nonresearch grant was awarded on August 1, 2017, to a consortium of investigators from MSU, the Greater Flint Health Coalition, the City of Flint, and others, which was led by Dr Hanna-Attisha at MSU. The grant established a lead exposure registry to collect data on a voluntary basis from residents who were exposed to the Flint water between April 25, 2014, and October 15, 2015. The Flint Registry ( www.flintregistry.org ), building upon a registry-planning grant awarded to MSU by the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services in January 2017, aims to (1) identify eligible participants and ensure robust registry data; (2) monitor health, child development, service utilization, and on-going lead exposure; and (3) improve service delivery to lead-exposed individuals.

The Flint Registry is a collaborative community-participatory effort that brings together many diverse partners to synergistically accomplish the registry’s goals. The registry structure includes a leadership team; an external advisory board with expertise in lead exposure, environmental justice, and informatics; parent partners, youth advisory council, and community advisory board; a marketing and communications team; and a public health law team. Work groups on various aspects of the registry include Flint residents and representatives from the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services.

Registry implementation

Recognizing the population-wide exposure, the Flint Registry eligibility criteria target individuals who lived, worked, or attended daycare or school at an address serviced by FWS from April 25, 2014, to October 15, 2015, including pregnant women and their prenatally exposed offspring. Based on geo-graphic, census, education, state, and employment data, an estimated 140 000 individuals were exposed to the Flint water and met the registry eligibility criteria. For the highest risk groups including children and residents of Flint, population-based lists identify potentially eligible people for direct mail and telephone recruitment. Recruitment strategies also include a multimedia publicity and outreach campaign leveraging community partners. Several data challenges exist including the number of partners and sources; existing laws and prerequisites for sharing and protecting data; different methods of transferring and exchanging data; and specific elements of obtaining consent.

The Flint Registry aims to enroll at a minimum 20 000 registrants (approximately 1200 per month). The Flint Registry launched a preenrollment phase in January 2018, and in the first 4 months, more than 1000 adults and children had preenrolled. The preenrollment period offered another avenue for community feedback in addition to advisory, stakeholders, and focus groups. Preenrollment also sought to identify perceived barriers to participation; strategies were then developed to overcome those barriers. Enrollment started in fall 2018 and consists of a tiered consent process; a baseline survey that screens for health and development concerns, service utilization, and on-going lead exposure and triggers referral to needed services; and follow-up surveys that will be administered about 12 months after the baseline survey.

A major emphasis of the registry is assessing service needs and eligibility of all registrants and referring them to appropriate services to promote health, development, and lead elimination. A custom community referral software platform allows the registry to directly connect registrants with service agencies. Com-munity service providers record referral outcomes in the platform, making the referral process a closed feedback loop with trackable metrics.

The Flint Registry will ascertain the registry’s impact by assessing eligibility, service needs, and referrals and by tracking and evaluating improvements in health and developmental outcomes. Short-term goals include increasing community awareness of the registry and providing training on the impact of lead on health. Longer-term goals include determining self-reported barriers to use of preventive services, increasing use of preventative services and lead elimination services among registrants, and evaluating associations between specific preventive services and health, behavior, and functional status outcomes. Medicaid encounter data will be used to help track outcomes.

“Flint lead-free” initiative

The Flint Registry consortium includes a diverse set of public, private, and nonprofit members, stakeholders, and partners including property managers, housing organizations, legal services, community organizations, foundations, and city/county/state government striving to make Flint a lead-free city by 2022. The program’s primary prevention focus seeks to identify service gaps, strategically align resources to accomplish their mission, and determine cost-effectiveness of local lead elimination. Flint is uniquely positioned to eliminate lead exposure because of a confluence of factors: ongoing LSL removal, the initiation and completion of home investigations and abatement, and community-wide engagement and awareness.

The Flint Action and Sustainability Team Start Pipe Replacement Program is renovating the city’s aging water system with federal and state funding by re-moving and replacing LSLs in an estimated 30 000 homes, and Habitat for Humanity is replacing corroded lead-based fixtures in eligible owner-occupied properties. 28 , 29 Achieving the lawsuit-mandated pipe replacement by 2020 would make Flint the third US city to have accomplished replacing all LSLs. 30 , 31

“Flint Lead Free” will track progress of both the Greater Flint Health Coalition’s elevated blood lead environmental inspection and abatement program and the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services Lead Safe Home Program. The Lead Safe Home Program uses Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Children’s Health Insurance Program funds for lead inspection and abatement. 32 , 33 It is an example of an innovative approach to protect low-income children from exposure to lead before blood lead detection. Both programs provide environmental lead testing and lead hazard control to eligible families. Tracked metrics include the number of environmental investigations completed; the number of homes identified for abatement; and the number of homes abated. Working with state and local partners, other tracked metrics include the number of children with BLLs above the CDC reference value, the number of existing and replaced LSLs, the number of water tests greater than 10 ppb, and ultimately the economic return on investment of lead elimination.

The Flint water crisis highlights the need for targeted risk communication strategies, improved environmental health infrastructure, enhanced surveil-lance, and primary prevention to identify and respond to the often invisible, disparate, and preventable environmental threats to the public’s health. It has also created a unique opportunity for a diverse group of stakeholders to contribute to policy development.

Increased attention on childhood lead exposure in Flint prompted the Flint Medicaid Waiver expansion that allows for coverage of children younger than 21 years and pregnant women who were impacted by the Flint water system and whose income levels are up to 400% of the federal poverty level. 34 The waiver provides these additional groups with access to doctors, behavioral health specialists, nutrition support, and other education and social services. Furthermore, increased attention on childhood lead exposure in general has resulted in additional support for CDC’s CLPPP. The CDC has used the additional funding to expand lead poisoning prevention activities with a goal of re-establishing a robust national program to conduct blood lead surveillance at the state/territorial/tribal/local level, support referral systems for appropriate follow-up services, and implement prevention activities. This cross-sector and multiagency effort further seeks to bridge the many jurisdictions involved in lead exposure and control.

The Flint Lead-Free initiative has the goal of be-coming a model lead-free city by 2022. Leveraging new and existing resources is key to achieving this milestone in Flint and elsewhere. The Lead Service Line Replacement Collaborative is an example of a successful multi stakeholder resource to help with community-specific voluntary full LSL replacement. 35

A comprehensive framework for lead elimination that incorporates both community and scientific involvement and broad perspectives will help further this goal. Ongoing education among policy makers about the effectiveness of infrastructure improvements and prevention of lead exposure can help sustain this momentum.

Implications for Policy & Practice

• ■ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notice of funding opportunity to support Flint emphasized the importance of collecting data that facilitates action and decision making for the prevention of lead poisoning.
• ■ The Flint Registry was granted public health authority status by the CDC, which has facilitated data-sharing agreements by allowing entities to share data with the registry without obtaining individual authorization.
• ■ Partnerships between private, public, and nonprofit organizations provide opportunities for collaboration that can help guide innovative strategies for primary lead prevention, raise awareness, extend outreach and communication efforts, and promote a shared sense of ownership. 36

Acknowledgments

Dr Hanna-Attisha is partially supported by grants from National Institute of Health (5UG3OD023285–02), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (74192), Michigan Department of Health & Human Services (E20180329-00-P), and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (1 NUE2EH001370-01-00). She has received many honorariums for speaking (from academic and nonprofits organizations), which have been donated to MSU-Hurley Pediatric Public Health Initiative. Her speaking agency is via WME Speakers. Dr Jones is currently funded on grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (grant no. 1 NUE2EH001370-01-00) and the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services (grant no. E20172805-00-AQ and grant no. 20182877–00). The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

This evaluation was reviewed and deemed nonhuman subjects research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Institutional Review Board.

All of the other authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Contributor Information

Perri Zeitz Ruckart, Lead Poisoning Prevention and Environmental Health Tracking Branch, Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia.

Adrienne S. Ettinger, Lead Poisoning Prevention and Environmental Health Tracking Branch, Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia.

Mona Hanna-Attisha, Pediatric Public Health Initiative and Department of Pediatrics and Human Development, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, Flint, Michigan.

Nicole Jones, Department of Pediatrics and Human Development/Division of Public Health, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.

Stephanie I. Davis, Office of Science, National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia.

Patrick N. Breysse, National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia.

There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.

• While Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history , the current warming is happening at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years.
• According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ), "Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact." 1
• Scientific information taken from natural sources (such as ice cores, rocks, and tree rings) and from modern equipment (like satellites and instruments) all show the signs of a changing climate.
• From global temperature rise to melting ice sheets, the evidence of a warming planet abounds.

The rate of change since the mid-20th century is unprecedented over millennia.

Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 800,000 years, there have been eight cycles of ice ages and warmer periods, with the end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

The current warming trend is different because it is clearly the result of human activities since the mid-1800s, and is proceeding at a rate not seen over many recent millennia. 1 It is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun’s energy in the Earth system. This extra energy has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land, and widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred.

Earth-orbiting satellites and new technologies have helped scientists see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate all over the world. These data, collected over many years, reveal the signs and patterns of a changing climate.

Scientists demonstrated the heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases in the mid-19th century. 2 Many of the science instruments NASA uses to study our climate focus on how these gases affect the movement of infrared radiation through the atmosphere. From the measured impacts of increases in these gases, there is no question that increased greenhouse gas levels warm Earth in response.

Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that Earth’s climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age. Carbon dioxide from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age. 3

The Evidence for Rapid Climate Change Is Compelling:

Global Temperature Is Rising

The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere and other human activities. 4 Most of the warming occurred in the past 40 years, with the seven most recent years being the warmest. The years 2016 and 2020 are tied for the warmest year on record. 5 Image credit: Ashwin Kumar, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic.

The Ocean Is Getting Warmer

The ocean has absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 100 meters (about 328 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.67 degrees Fahrenheit (0.33 degrees Celsius) since 1969. 6 Earth stores 90% of the extra energy in the ocean. Image credit: Kelsey Roberts/USGS

The Ice Sheets Are Shrinking

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost an average of 279 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2019, while Antarctica lost about 148 billion tons of ice per year. 7 Image: The Antarctic Peninsula, Credit: NASA

Glaciers Are Retreating

Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska, and Africa. 8 Image: Miles Glacier, Alaska Image credit: NASA

Snow Cover Is Decreasing

Satellite observations reveal that the amount of spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has decreased over the past five decades and the snow is melting earlier. 9 Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Sea Level Is Rising

Global sea level rose about 8 inches (20 centimeters) in the last century. The rate in the last two decades, however, is nearly double that of the last century and accelerating slightly every year. 10 Image credit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Norfolk District

Arctic Sea Ice Is Declining

Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades. 11 Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

Extreme Events Are Increasing in Frequency

The number of record high temperature events in the United States has been increasing, while the number of record low temperature events has been decreasing, since 1950. The U.S. has also witnessed increasing numbers of intense rainfall events. 12 Image credit: Régine Fabri,  CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Ocean Acidification Is Increasing

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30%. 13 , 14 This increase is due to humans emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and hence more being absorbed into the ocean. The ocean has absorbed between 20% and 30% of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in recent decades (7.2 to 10.8 billion metric tons per year). 1 5 , 16 Image credit: NOAA

1. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, WGI, Technical Summary . B.D. Santer et.al., “A search for human influences on the thermal structure of the atmosphere.” Nature 382 (04 July 1996): 39-46. https://doi.org/10.1038/382039a0. Gabriele C. Hegerl et al., “Detecting Greenhouse-Gas-Induced Climate Change with an Optimal Fingerprint Method.” Journal of Climate 9 (October 1996): 2281-2306. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(1996)009<2281:DGGICC>2.0.CO;2. V. Ramaswamy, et al., “Anthropogenic and Natural Influences in the Evolution of Lower Stratospheric Cooling.” Science 311 (24 February 2006): 1138-1141. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1122587. B.D. Santer et al., “Contributions of Anthropogenic and Natural Forcing to Recent Tropopause Height Changes.” Science 301 (25 July 2003): 479-483. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1084123. T. Westerhold et al., "An astronomically dated record of Earth’s climate and its predictability over the last 66 million years." Science 369 (11 Sept. 2020): 1383-1387. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1094123

2. In 1824, Joseph Fourier calculated that an Earth-sized planet, at our distance from the Sun, ought to be much colder. He suggested something in the atmosphere must be acting like an insulating blanket. In 1856, Eunice Foote discovered that blanket, showing that carbon dioxide and water vapor in Earth's atmosphere trap escaping infrared (heat) radiation. In the 1860s, physicist John Tyndall recognized Earth's natural greenhouse effect and suggested that slight changes in the atmospheric composition could bring about climatic variations. In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. In 1938, Guy Callendar connected carbon dioxide increases in Earth’s atmosphere to global warming. In 1941, Milutin Milankovic linked ice ages to Earth’s orbital characteristics. Gilbert Plass formulated the Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change in 1956.

3. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, WG1, Chapter 2 Vostok ice core data; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record O. Gaffney, W. Steffen, "The Anthropocene Equation." The Anthropocene Review 4, issue 1 (April 2017): 53-61. https://doi.org/abs/10.1177/2053019616688022.

4. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/monitoring https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/ http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp

5. https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20170118/

6. S. Levitus, J. Antonov, T. Boyer, O Baranova, H. Garcia, R. Locarnini, A. Mishonov, J. Reagan, D. Seidov, E. Yarosh, M. Zweng, " NCEI ocean heat content, temperature anomalies, salinity anomalies, thermosteric sea level anomalies, halosteric sea level anomalies, and total steric sea level anomalies from 1955 to present calculated from in situ oceanographic subsurface profile data (NCEI Accession 0164586), Version 4.4. (2017) NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/index3.html K. von Schuckmann, L. Cheng, L,. D. Palmer, J. Hansen, C. Tassone, V. Aich, S. Adusumilli, H. Beltrami, H., T. Boyer, F. Cuesta-Valero, D. Desbruyeres, C. Domingues, A. Garcia-Garcia, P. Gentine, J. Gilson, M. Gorfer, L. Haimberger, M. Ishii, M., G. Johnson, R. Killick, B. King, G. Kirchengast, N. Kolodziejczyk, J. Lyman, B. Marzeion, M. Mayer, M. Monier, D. Monselesan, S. Purkey, D. Roemmich, A. Schweiger, S. Seneviratne, A. Shepherd, D. Slater, A. Steiner, F. Straneo, M.L. Timmermans, S. Wijffels. "Heat stored in the Earth system: where does the energy go?" Earth System Science Data 12, Issue 3 (07 September 2020): 2013-2041. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2013-2020.

7. I. Velicogna, Yara Mohajerani, A. Geruo, F. Landerer, J. Mouginot, B. Noel, E. Rignot, T. Sutterly, M. van den Broeke, M. Wessem, D. Wiese, "Continuity of Ice Sheet Mass Loss in Greenland and Antarctica From the GRACE and GRACE Follow-On Missions." Geophysical Research Letters 47, Issue 8 (28 April 2020): e2020GL087291. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL087291.

8. National Snow and Ice Data Center World Glacier Monitoring Service

9. National Snow and Ice Data Center D.A. Robinson, D. K. Hall, and T. L. Mote, "MEaSUREs Northern Hemisphere Terrestrial Snow Cover Extent Daily 25km EASE-Grid 2.0, Version 1 (2017). Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. doi: https://doi.org/10.5067/MEASURES/CRYOSPHERE/nsidc-0530.001 . http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/snow_extent.html Rutgers University Global Snow Lab. Data History

10. R.S. Nerem, B.D. Beckley, J. T. Fasullo, B.D. Hamlington, D. Masters, and G.T. Mitchum, "Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era." PNAS 15, no. 9 (12 Feb. 2018): 2022-2025. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1717312115.

11. https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/sea_ice.html Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS, Zhang and Rothrock, 2003) http://psc.apl.washington.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/ http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/projections-of-an-ice-diminished-arctic-ocean/

12. USGCRP, 2017: Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I [Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, 470 pp, https://doi.org/10.7930/j0j964j6 .

13. http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F

14. http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification

15. C.L. Sabine, et al., “The Oceanic Sink for Anthropogenic CO2.” Science 305 (16 July 2004): 367-371. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1097403.

16. Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate , Technical Summary, Chapter TS.5, Changing Ocean, Marine Ecosystems, and Dependent Communities, Section 5.2.2.3. https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/technical-summary/

Header image shows clouds imitating mountains as the sun sets after midnight as seen from Denali's backcountry Unit 13 on June 14, 2019. Credit: NPS/Emily Mesner Image credit in list of evidence: Ashwin Kumar, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic.

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Environmental Crisis and the Role of Media

International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development

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Journal of US-China Public Administration

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Turkey’s media agenda mostly consists of European relations, the Middle East question and Iraq. The rest of this agenda is predominantly economic news. Because of its geographical location, it is difficult for environmental problems to be perceived as leading problems and find places in Turkey’s national newspapers. The importance of the local media arises in creating awareness about the environmental issues and forming public opinion in order to find solutions. Due to the immediacy component of news, creating public opinion about the environment through local as opposed to national media is considered to be a more effective method. It is purpose of researcher to determine whether this which is seen to be effective theoretically will also have the same effect in practice. In this research, content analysis will be applied to three local newspapers in Turkey. It has seen that the local media reports environmental news, its source are government and city hall. It has given information to form awareness to the environmental issues.

Salvador Salu

This study examines the coverage of environmental issues in the local newspapers of Karnataka, India. The results are based on an analysis of the content of environmental coverage in two local daily newspapers (Kannada Prabha and Vijaya Karnataka). The result depicts that Kannada Prabha and Vijaya Karnataka published an average of 1.91 and 1.22 stories per day, respectively. The top focused issue of these newspapers was natural disasters. Almost all 258 (89.27%) stories were published without deep investigations or in-depth analysis. In order to carry out the objectives of the research, qualitative and quantitative methodologies were employed. The study tries to find out the answers to the problem of whether Kannada newspapers cover sufficiently environmental issues. Primary data were collected through content analysis. Significant content analysis findings were that the selected newspapers cover environmental issues, though the subject matter did not receive much coverage. The environmental crisis-related issues coverage by these two newspapers was lack of diversification, lack of follow-up news and sufficient usage of illustration. However, based on the average daily coverage of environmental issues, the study concludes that environmental journalism is a strong subfield in local newspapers of Karnataka, India. Future studies need to consider a large number of samples. The researcher also tries to analyze the reasons for the lack of coverage through qualitative analysis. In the final qualitative study, it was found that political, economic, social, cultural, technological and scientific factors are drivers of such a low level of coverage.

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The main aim of this paper is to make a brief approach to how the newspapers deal with the difficult task of making people aware of the environment. To try to discover the view newspapers have about this topic we have analysed two newspapers, one regional (El periódico Extremadura) and one which is published for all Spain (El País) in a double approach. Firstly, we will study the information these two newspapers offered about a natural event, the case of an earthquake which happened in Melilla on January 2016. Secondly we will analyse the news those two newspapers presented about the environment in general in a given period of time.

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This is not an abstract. This is just to inform readers/researchers that this work is not legitimately published so the authors cannot be cited. This was the thesis of my group when we were in our senior year of our undergraduate degree, AB Journalism, A.Y. 2012-2013. This research had not been published in any journal, nor had it been presented in any conference. But I decided to upload it here because researchers may find the references we cited useful.

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Measuring economic crises impact transitioning to a circular economy

• Published: 23 May 2023

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• Akvilė Feiferytė-Skirienė   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9292-5347 1 &
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Increasing global concern about climate change and the circular economy have successfully established itselves in international and national policies over the last decade, with the aim of reshaping the production and consumer behavior. The circular economy is one of the core pillars of European Union policy and its success depends on the energy efficiency, reducing production costs, and maintaining employment levels by ensuring continuous strong economic independency of the region. While crises are unavoidable and continue to appear, this paper aims to project the impact of any crisis on sustainability transitions using data analysis of the Global Financial crisis from 2008 to 2009 and discuss how the success of the circular economy implementation and environmental policies could be affected. The paper notes that the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 had a short-term positive impact on environmental degradation and that economic interests overshadowed environmental goals. Due to the recent events of the ongoing Russia and Ukraine war, COVID-19 societal and industrial behavior has shifted from sustainable to linear and has taken a step backward in reducing environmental pollution and achieving Sustainable Development Goals. Analysis of already present data and the context of the 2008–2009 global financial crisis, reviewing of COVID-19 impact on the global economy, health sector, and environmental policies allows us to predict the consequences, as it relates to the future of circular economy policy.

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1 Introduction

Since the Industrial Revolution, humankind itself has become a geological force leading to a human-induced climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels for energy use and industrial purposes, mass extinction of species due to rapid urbanization and unsustainable agricultural activities, rising sea levels, and global plastic pollution (de Wit et al., 2018 ). As a result, we are living above ecosystems’ boundaries causing an ecological overshoot (Rockström et al., 2009 ) and it is happening even faster than countries are able to achieve social thresholds (Fanning et al., 2021 ). Industrial activities over the past 200 years have led to a global environmental crisis that requires urgent actions ensuring environmental and economic stability for future generations. Increased number of international activities pursuing circular economy and sustainability is taking a place aiming to maintain and significantly reduce the impact to the environment.

The sustainability principles are core position of the European Union’s (EU) circular economy policy incorporated in the Green Deal package (European Commission, 2020 ). The concept of circular economy (CE) has an ambitious plan to transform production and consumption processes by replacing the linear economy with circular alternatives and reducing the consumption of primary resources, waste and emissions output by closing the loop of economic activities (Haas et al., 2015 ; Haupt et al., 2017 ; Korhonen et al., 2018 ; Peters et al., 2007 ). The last decade marked a drastic and successful rise of the CE concept at the international and national levels (Besenbacher, 2015 ; Fitch-Roy et al., 2021 ), which provided CE the role of modernizing the industrial sector and solving the rising economic and environmental challenges (Calisto Friant et al., 2021 ). Addressing those challenges, the Green Deal strategy sets a goal to transform the EU into a modern resource-efficient and competitive economy with no net emissions of greenhouse gas by 2050 (European Commission, 2020 ). The implementation of this goal is complicated because of relationship between economy, ecosystems and earth systems tackling climate change and ensuring economic growth at the same time (Dolge & Blumberga, 2021 ).

Economic growth with increased production and consumption activities is desirable for its positive social and economic impact to the societies and states (Alam & Kabir, 2013 ). The economic transformation from unsustainable to more sustainable and circular ones can be difficult because it requires radical and systematic political and economic changes in the context of existing social and ecological structures and processes in society, which have to be overcome in the transition process (Olsson et al., 2014 ). The economic development and industrial activities in the most developed countries are based on natural resource extraction, which decreases resource efficiency and environment damage (Scheel et al., 2020 ). The EU’s circular economy and the new Green Deal policy are based on economic growth by boosting sustainable development, green technologies, transport with significant emission reduction (Klemeš et al., 2020 ). As a result, it could be the key in solving the climate change problem. However, Calisto Friant et al. ( 2021 ) finds that the EU chose an optimistic CE approach, which was based on technological growth and innovation, but transformative changes exclude the reduction of overall material consumption. Some studies on economic decoupling also confirm that it is impossible to achieve the reduction of the material footprint, and increase Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita at the same time (Albert, 2020 ; Apeaning, 2021 ; Haberl et al., 2020 ), simply because there is a strong correlation between energy consumption and economic growth (Akram, 2013 ). Thereby some studies confirm environmental problems escalation as economic growth increase (Dolge & Blumberga, 2021 ; D. Wang et al., 2019 ). Furthermore, the CE implementation goals described in international and national regulations have fallen short of the expected current levels of implementation in terms of energy recovery, circular economy and environmental improvement. All assumptions and research findings had been confirmed in the UN Emission Gap report (UNEPT, 2019 ) with a conclusion that countries have never managed to stop the growth of greenhouse gas emissions with an annual increase of 1.5% in the last decade.

While the global coronavirus pandemic favorably contributed to climate change mitigation by leading to an unprecedented 5.4% drop in CO 2 emissions, post-pandemic economies are bouncing back to the pre-pandemic levels with rising Green House Gas (GHG) emissions (UNEP, 2021 ). According to the Circularity Gap report, only 8.6% of the global economy was circular in 2019, up from 9.1% just 2 years ago (de Wit et al., 2020 ). The report suggests that this could be explained by 3 underlying trends: “high rates of material extraction, ongoing stock build-up caused by urbanization, and low levels of end-of-use processing and cycling” (UNEPT, 2019 ). A recent publication of Bradshaw et al. ( 2021 ) analysis highlights several problems and incapacity of today’s society and government taking urgent action to stop raising environmental issues that are more threatening than currently believed: continuing biodiversity loss, scientifically undeniable sixth mass extinction of species, growing population size, and overconsumption causing social problems, failing implementation of international sustainable goals and climate change, and political impotence to take necessary action to stop the environmental crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the financial crisis that came along with it mark a new stage for the future of the CE and environmental policies and might be seen as a disturbance. As todays situation on global economic instability and the ongoing Russia – Ukraine war caused food and energy shortages, inflation, unwinding asset bubbles in the U.S., supply chain bottlenecks, and debt crises in developing countries (Alden, 2022 ), it is important to review how sustainability indicators had been impacted by previous financial crisis happened in 2008–2009 to improve our future decisions for meeting upcoming challenges and testing resilience of sustainability. The CE concept was introduced by the EU a few years after the economic impact global financial crisis in 2008–2009 completed and was developed during the economic upswing period. In times of shock and uncertainty, countries’ determination to apply sustainability principles and keep the core of the current direction has to follow meaningful and operational decision-making process, including normative sustainability criteria by keeping the transition above the minimum levels (Derissen et al., 2011 ). Sustainability resilience analysis could help identify and cover any potential disruptions which could cause disturbances and how sustainability could recover from a disruption through adaptive components (Marchese et al., 2018 ). Some authors agree that sustainability resilience should include risk management framework to explore potential threats and issues regarding sustainability implementation to minimize their impact by applying controls and mitigation actions (Park et al., 2013 ; Saunders & Becker, 2015 ).

The relationship between economic growth and environmental sustainability, political changes and sustainability has been widely studied in the scientific articles, environmental and economic literature, while research on the environmental effects of the financial crisis is scarce (Burns & Tobin, 2016 ; Pacca et al., 2020 ) and lacks profound analysis and had been briefly addressed only in few scientific publications. Siddiqi ( 2000 ) results from the Asian Financial Crisis in 1998–2000 confirms short-term benefits from the reduction of air and water pollution, but with an economic slowdown its deferments to replace inefficient equipment with more efficient alternatives, has a negative impact on the land environment by increasing the pressure to clear forests for fire-wood, timber, or agricultural land. Another scientific article published by Geels ( 2013 ) analyses the impact of a financial-economic crisis on sustainability transitions through renewable energy, green policies, climate policies, urban initiatives, public opinion, and civil society initiatives. Author finds that during the global financial, crisis governments across the globe responded with “green stimulus” packages that boosted the investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and green innovations. The global growth was mostly driven by the expansion of solar power (61%), while investments in other renewable energy industries such as wind, biomass, biofuels, geothermal, and marine shrunk. The research concludes that the global financial crisis weakened public and political priorities on climate and sustainability policies and as a result, countries failed to fulfill Copenhagen 2009 objectives with no success of the Kyoto, reduced feed-in tariffs and renewable support, and failed the Emission Trading System. Although, todays technologies to exploit renewable resources are not sufficient to satisfy primary energy demand and has financial and technological disadvantages which requires capital-intensive investments, have high production costs, lower energy production volumes comparing to fossil energy production, and no guarantee for stability of energy production (Cucchiella & D’Adamo, 2012 ).

Furthermore, Brem et al. ( 2020 ) research finds that the financial crisis also affects the business sector’s willingness to take risks and invest in innovations and research mostly for financial reasons. Bank loans are still the most important source of corporate financing and the banking sector’s decision to refrain from investment in innovative firms because of the risk of capital loss had a bigger effect on the business than the raised funding from the government.

Another group of research papers (Anger & Barker, 2015 ; Jalles, 2020 ; Monteiro et al., 2018 ; Sadorsky, 2020 ) focus on the air pollution reduction analysis in the periods during and after the financial crisis. Castellanos and Boersma ( 2012 ) research paper confirms the reduction of NO 2 emissions by 15–30% in the industrial regions in Europe during the global economic recession period in 2009. It also confirmed the increase in NO 2 emissions during the economic recovery period with more intensive production activities.

Today, Europe recognizes environmental pollution and climate change as existential threats and an opportunity to address these issues and transition to a circular society, especially despite the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war, where introduced economic sanctions focus on energy embargo from Russia and detecting the first signs of upcoming global economic crisis. Environmental challenges, growing financial and energy crisis require consolidated actions from the EU institutions to be able effective maintain growing risk failing the circular economy objectives. Debates on the energy mix to achieve the global security of energy supply is growing and creates the perfect opportunity to encourage the transition to sustainability and CE-based economy transformation. Following Geels ( 2013 ) approach, financial-economic crisis can be seen as a shock and creates a pressure for governments to take actions and initiate changes. As a result, the sustainability transition may enter the new phase moving from pre-development (with a focus only on research and development activities) to a take-off phase (green innovations deployment and installation). It can be achieved only in countries with strong commitment to sustainable solutions and innovations. On the other hand, Dagar and Malik ( 2023 ) find that macroeconomic factors and growing oil prices can cause a lower production, have an impact to export deduction and eruptions in supply chain. It is only confirming the importance of understanding how future financial crises might affect tomorrow’s sustainability transitions and what side effects might be expected to find the perfect balance between economic recovery and commitment to a sustainable transition.

This paper assessing changes in GHG emissions, energy intensity, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Foreign Direct Investments (FDI), and Research and Development (R&D) changes through the 2009–2021 period after the global financial crisis occurred and during the economic recovery period until these days providing the insights on, what we might expect in future, when a financial or any other crisis occur. The success of the EU’s Green Deal depends on how the EU’s CE policy will be able to cope and move forward to a circularity transition in the context of the economic and environmental crisis caused by COVID-19. Low carbon economy can help to generate wider socioeconomic benefits due to energy dependency reduction by replacing fossil fuels with domestic resources (Moutinho et al., 2018 ).

To achieve the goal, this study uses the modified Logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) decomposition method with Kaya identity equations to understand factors with the biggest impact to GHG emissions. As biggest economies are more likely have a bigger contribution to GHG emissions, the five biggest European Union economies were chosen for further analysis. LMDI decomposition analysis can help to identify structure effects as changes in each sector and how they drive an environmental impact (Roux & Plank, 2022 ). The LMDI decomposition method is widely used in recent publications where separate sectors or country—wide impact to GHG emission deduction have been investigated. (Alajmi, 2021 ; Dolge & Blumberga, 2021 ; González et al., 2022 ; Luo et al., 2023 ; Shao et al., 2016 ). An combination of LMDI decomposition method and Kaya identity equation was used by Dolge and Blumberga ( 2021 ) where analysis of three Baltic states—Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were conducted to identify key drivers of GHG emissions and how it can be mitigated in the long time period until 2030 by taking into account three possible scenarios: existing measures scenario, additional measures scenario, and business as usual scenario. The study found that energy intensity reduction shows positive effects on lowering GHG emissions. As a result, energy efficiency policies play a key role to speed up positive impact to the climate. Furthermore, the study finds the need to strengthen 3 Baltic states role to be more ambitious and take more drastical decisions on the existing national climate policies with the specific focus on the transport, industry, services, agriculture and household sectors.

We contribute to previous research in various ways. First, the analysis takes 12 years’ period with a specific focus on 2009, 2012, 2019 and 2021 years’ data allowing to evaluate an impact of the global financial crisis in 2009, economic recovery and growth periods in 2012 and 2019, respectively, and the beginning of COVID-19 resulted changes in emissions and financial crisis period in 2021. Second, the LMDI decomposition method allows to measure different factors and their impact on emissions related to energy, foreign direct investments, including research &development. The comparative analysis between five countries is performed to evaluate their performance and efficiency.

The study includes literature review analysis in Sect.  3.1 , which presents any scientific publications published on financial crisis and sustainability or environment. Section  3.2 to track the progress toward sustainability and climate mitigation goals on the period 2009–2021 using emission intensity, energy intensity, GDP, FDI, R&D, and population growth analysis. Section  3.3 gives an overview of current events in the context of the CE and taken actions by the EU aiming to maintain upcoming financial and energy security challenges. Therefore, this study presents a novel and practical assessment tool for policy makers in a decisions’ management process giving more assurance on the transitioning to the circular economy effectiveness by highlighting the most critical and significant energy consumption and carbon reduction patterns.

2 Material and methods

The applied methodology is divided into separate groups: (1) completed literature review to establish research problems and narrows down the research question; (2) 4 selected countries (Germany, France, Italy, and Spain) data analysis was completed using Logarithmic Mean Divisia index (LMDI) decomposition method with Kaya identity equations; (3) overview of taken actions to mitigate COVID-19, financial crisis, and the Russia–Ukraine war caused issues implementing Green Deal objectives. The applied conceptual framework of this study is presented in Fig.  1 .

Methodology framework (designed by authors)

2.1 Literature review

In this paper, the search and review of existing literature and publications (scientific articles, case studies, non-governmental organization information from reports view) on the global 2008 financial crisis and its impact on the environment, impacts of COVID-19 on the global economy in the context of CE will help map and assess the research area and justify the research question. Scientific literature was collected from “Elsevier’s Scopus”, “Elsevier’s ScienceDirect” databases, and Google Scholar using keywords “global AND financial AND crisis AND air AND pollution”, “global AND financial AND crisis AND sustainability”, “global AND financial AND crisis AND environment”, “COVID-19 AND circular AND economy” to investigate the relationship between selected variables and provide the review how economic crisis impacts changes in the sustainability pattern. This was used to develop the theoretical framework from which the financial crisis impact on the CE study emerges and the following a conceptual framework that then becomes the basis of the current COVID-19 situation review. The current review explores and compares the impact of the Global Financial crisis in 2008 and COVID-19 on the sustainability and CE policies, including wide range of perspectives from different sources (Snyder, 2019 ).

The final section of this research includes an overview of the current years COVID-19, financial crisis and energy crisis analysis where implications how it could impact the future development of the circular economy is discussed.

2.2 Kaya LMDI decomposition method

Authors applied and modified Long-Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) decomposition method discussed by Ang ( 2004 ) by adding foreign direct investment (FDI) and research & development (R&D) index. Foreign direct investment indicator was selected to investigate how investments to sustainable projects had changed overtime and their correlation level with GHG emissions. LMDI method allows to assess GHG emissions changes taking into account energy intensity (E), economic growth (GDP), foreign direct investment (FDI), expenses on Research and Development (R&D), and population (P) growth variables in certain period. Decomposition analysis was completed by using the Kaya identity equation which is expressed as follow:

Data for Kaya identity decomposition was collected using Eurostat database and summarized in Table 1 .

The applied period for data collection was 2008–2020. The decomposition analysis helps to identify fundamental drivers to change GHG emissions based on historical data. A comprehensive assessment of each component’s relative weight on GHG emissions helps to determine the impact of applied policy measures. Jiang et al. ( 2021 ) used decomposition analysis method for principal carbon emissions contributors completed on six contributors: China, the US, India, Russia, Japan, and Germany confirms that consumption volumes and international input structures are main factors increasing carbon emissions. Domestic input structure changes helped significantly reduce carbon emissions.

Each identity indicator is had been applied using Kaya identity equation as follows:

The LMDI for a five-factor case had been applied according to defined Kaya identity indicators: emission intensity, (EMI), energy intensity (ENI), GDP growth, FDI growth, and population growth (POP), where the following relationship between variables is presented in the formula:

Selected countries for analysis are Germany, France, Italy, and Spain as biggest economies in Europe. The chosen time interval of the study covers 13-year period from 2009 to 2021. The time interval is justified, because 2009 marks a peak of the global financial crisis and year 2021 is the beginning of the current financial crisis. The analysis period was divided in 3 stages where change analysis had been conducted: (1) comparative analysis between financial crisis 2009 and economic recovery period in 2012; (2) change during economic growth period between 2019 and 2012, and; (3) change analysis between COVID-19 and economic crisis period in 2021 with economic growth period in 2019.

3.1 Lessons learned from the global financial crisis in 2008

While the concept of the CE itself presents considerable benefits by reducing waste, minimizing dependence on raw materials and imports, long-term economic growth and stability, the results of countries acts in the face of a crisis confirm different approaches. Any environmental, societal, financial or economic disaster are weakening economies and marginalizing efforts to build sustainability and the CE principles-based economy (Elhoseny et al., 2022 ). Anger and Barker ( 2015 ) agree that the effects of the financial crisis on the environment are usually linked to the reduction of emissions, which can be associated with lower economic activity and not by energy production structural changes. As a result, the economic crisis causes a switch of production to lower cost, more pollution intensive activities by using coal instead of gas for electricity production. The EU’s coal demand was steadily declining for a decade with a lowest point in 2020, as a result of COVID-19 pandemic and low gas prices in the market. Consequently, aims to improve economic recovery, rise of gas prices, weak hydropower, and the urgent need to replace Russian suppliers, limited the EU’s alternative resources for the energy production. It was confirmed by coal use trends in 2022 with an annual 1.2% growth to 8,025Mt global consumption mostly for electricity generation in all regions. EU countries increased coal power generation, restarted closed plants together with the acceleration of renewables and extension of lifetimes of nuclear plants (IEA, 2022a ).

In addition, Geels ( 2013 ) research on the financial-economic crisis impact to sustainability finds a disproportion of investments to renewable and fossil fuel energy in 2011 during the economic recovery period when biggest economy countries’ invested $237 billion in renewable energy while about $302 billion had been invested in new fossil fuel generating capacity such as coal and gas. The author declares that European environmental and climate policy instruments (green stimulus, feed-in tariffs, European emissions trading) are not sufficient enough and appear to be weakening during the financial crisis of 2008–2009. Jalles ( 2020 ) finds that the economic crisis led to a statistically significant decrease in CO 2 emissions, while methane and fluorinated gas emissions responded positively during the economic crisis and with a negative effect in the presence of strong economic conditions. Moreover, the financial crisis led to a positive response of consumption-related emissions and suggests that the economic crisis encourages the consumption of goods with lower environmental quality.

Among the existing evidence, Sadorsky ( 2020 ) finds that after the last financial crisis in 2008–2009, the change in CO 2 emissions in the post-financial crisis period was lower than the change in CO 2 emissions during pre-financial crisis. While developed countries (Japan, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, and the U.S.) experienced a negative changes in CO 2 emissions in the post-financial crisis period, some countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, China, and India) experienced an increase in CO 2 emissions during the post-financial crisis period. However, the short-term positive effects of the crisis, consisting of lower air, and water pollution intensities have been negated in the long run by investments in the economy that aimed to achieve quick returns and recovery by compensating for losses rather than focusing on long term environmental and financial stability (Elliott, 2011 ; Jiang & Guan, 2017 ; Liu & Song, 2020 ; Peters et al., 2007 ). The analysis results of Jiang and Guan ( 2017 ) show that after the end of the financial crisis CO 2 emissions from production processes skyrocketed from 206 Mt in 2008 to 1,711 Mt in 2011. Total CO 2 emissions increased by 9.3% in 2011 compared with 2009 (IEA, 2018 ). The degree of annual emissions growth was even higher than before the crisis. China became the world leader in CO 2 emissions in 2006 and since then, annual CO 2 emissions have continued to rise. Even during the Global Financial crisis in 2008–-2009, China’s total CO 2 emissions increased by 5.2% from 7,375 Mt to 7,759 Mt (Global Carbon Atlas, 2019 ; Pacca et al., 2020 ). Pacca et al. ( 2020 ) examined the impact of 419 financial crises on air pollutant emissions CO 2 , SO 2 , NO x , and PM 2.5 in 150 countries from 1970 to 2014. The results of his analysis confirmed the decrease in global emissions of CO 2 , SO 2 , and NOx in the short-term and showed that the positive effects were only observed in high income countries, while they had no impact in low income countries. While countries focus on increasing their income in the short-term and ensuring the continuous growth of average standards of living (Ehrlich et al., 2012 ), the need to maintain the unavoidable environmental problems has taken second place and receives little attention (Bradshaw et al., 2021 ).

Environmental regulations are particularly vulnerable and their potential benefits are difficult to quantify (Jordan et al., 2013 ). The 2008 global financial crisis showed that governments have been focusing on ensuring financial sector stability to prevent major disruptions by bailing out financial institutions on a massive scale and injecting large amounts of capital (Meier et al., 2021 ). For example, European governments spent €600 billion on supporting the financial sector, equivalent to 4.6% of European GDP (Benczur et al., 2017 ), while environmental problems had to take a step back on the list of priorities and the density of EU environmental legislation proposals decreased dramatically during the crisis with only 2 environmental legislation proposals in 2009, 4 proposals in 2010 and 6 proposals in 2011. The significant increase in environmental legislation proposals were found in 2012 with 13 proposals focusing on climate change (Burns et al., 2020 ). Russel and Benson ( 2014 ) find that there has been a shift away from green stimulus measures during periods of economic recession in the UK. These findings suggest that environmental improvement does not become a long-term policy during the economic crisis and in the wider perspective, economic interests overcome SD and CE. Furthermore, Lamperti et al. ( 2019 ) predict that climate change through extreme weather events could increase the possibility of financial crises occurring with reduced productivity and industries operation abilities more than twice over.

3.2 LMDI decomposition results for Germany, France, Italy and Spain

Completed literature review confirms the impact of the economic crisis on environmental policies and emission changes. The following analysis of LMDI decomposition was completed on Germany, France, Italy and Spain countries being among the biggest economies in the European Union comparing GDP per capita with other EU’s countries (Eurostat, 2021 ). As a result, these countries contain enough resources and tools to maintain dual control relationship between climate change mitigation measures and economic growth stimulation. In order to investigate these countries capabilities to mitigate GHG emission deduction, a more in-depth analysis is conducted to observe changes of Kaya identity factors and to analyze different factors effect on GHG emissions. Analysis was conducted comparing 4 periods in the timeline with the following rationale: 2009 during the peak of the global financial crisis, 2012 was a year when economy started recovering, 2019 year selected being as year before the COVID-19 pandemic started, and 2021 year when the first signs of an upcoming economic crisis started to show.

Summary of used data for Kaya identity indicators with calculated change between periods is presented in Table 2 .

Initial analysis of 6 indicators shows GHG emissions reduction in all countries comparing 4 selected periods, except in Germany where GHG emissions increased by 18.2 in comparison with 2009 and 2012 data. As discussed previously, authors (Anger & Barker, 2015 ; Monteiro et al., 2018 ; Sadorsky, 2020 ) analyzing energy consumption changes finds the direct correlation between economic activity, measured by GDP changes, and FDI. However, completed more detail year by year analysis finds an increase in GHG emissions during the economy recovery period in some countries (see Fig.  2 ). Furthermore, it shows a significant increase in GHG emissions in 2021 in all 4 countries. It can be associated with the end of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions when countries started coming back to their normal economic activities by accelerating economic activities along with energy intensity. R&D are one of key factors determining economic success through the increase in economic productivity and greater technological potential (Dima et al., 2018 ). However, some studies find that a high investment volume in the R&D does not mean a respective increase in the productivity and economic growth (Celli et al., 2021 ; Gordon, 2018 ). One of the explanation, it becomes more resource intensive and costly to find and develop ideas that could have a major impact (Bloom et al., 2020 ).

GHG emission changes in Germany, France, Italy and Spain during the period of 2009–2021 (Eurostat, 2021 )

Our analysis cannot fully confirm energy consumption levels association with economic indicators such as GDP and FDI. Only Germany increased energy consumption by 73.0 Mt eq during the period of 2012–2019 with GDP growth of 728.0 million euro, and FDI increase by 529.0 million euro. France, Italy, and Spain was showing energy intensity decrease while GDP, FDI, and investments to R&D were growing. However, comparative data analysis of periods 2019 and 2021 finds that decrease in energy intensity and slowdown in GDP growth in all 4 countries of this analysis. Additionally, countries investments in R&D was also declining in last few years showing a growing concentration to fast economic recovery instead of focusing on long-term investments in innovations.

Summarized results of completed analysis of the LMDI decomposition results for Germany, France, Italy, and Spain is presented in Table 3 .

As it is noted in Table 2 , the GHG emissions decreased in all countries during the analysis period, except in Germany, when during the economic recovery period, GHG increased by 18.2 million tons of CO 2 . Germany’s energy structure consists of 44.6% renewables which includes wind onshore, solar, biomass as the biggest share of all renewables. Lignite, natural gas and hard coal takes another 45% share of energy sources (BDEW, 2022 ). France is highly dependable on nuclear power which is the main energy source of domestic energy production (77%), bioenergy and waste are second source with 13% share. France imports all coal and oil needs and has the lowest need for fossil fuel among G20 countries thanks to the significant share of nuclear power (IEA, 2021 ). The major energy source in Italy is fossil fuels mostly from natural gas (43%) and oil (32%). Energy production is not well developed in Italy and takes nearly 20% of total energy production. However, Italy is strongly committed to increase energy production from renewables share by 2026 with 59-billion-euro injection into the energy sector (International Trade Administration, 2022 ). Renewables are leading energy source in Spain with dominating wind, hydro, and solar sources, followed by nuclear power and natural gas (IEA, 2022b ).

Following LMDI analysis results from Table 3 , the decrease in absolute GHG emissions was caused mainly by constantly decrease in energy only in Germany from 0.13 in 2009 until 0.09 in 2021. Other countries show consistent increase in energy intensity through the whole periods of the analysis, except small deduction in Italy and Spain during the economic recovery period in 2012, when energy intensity decreased by 0.01 and 0.09 points, respectively. It indicates that countries have been taking efficiency improvement project to reduce energy consumption. The significant growth of the energy intensity in Italy and Spain was found during the following periods in 2019 and 2021 when economic recovery was one of the main goals for economies. As a result, it can be confirmed that countries were able to keep the same growth of economic activities and managed to reduce GHG emissions at the same time.

The end of the global financial crisis marks the growth of economic activity, where GDP, FDI, and R&D growth had been significant, as observed in 2012, 2019, and 2021. Countries were able attract significant amount of FDI and the investments in the R&D activities against GDP were consistent. The R&D growth was in line with countries’ GDP growth. However, economic recession confirms the negative impact on R&D investments. It shows that countries shifted their focus from sustainable innovations and researches to other subjects which gives more concerns to them and give a reason for potential debates if the investment to R&D can be efficient comparing to expectation on their contribution to economy recovery. This issue was discussed by few researches (Bloom et al., 2020 ; Celli et al., 2021 ; Gordon, 2018 ) noting that investments are costly, do not give the same financial benefit or boost to the economy as it was expected in the beginning. In this particular case, countries were focusing on increased health costs and energy independency assurance after the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion to Ukraine when multiple number of sanctions were imposed by the EU.

3.3 Environment versus economy in the post-pandemic world

The global economy causes a tight dependence of world countries’ economies to each other and on the intensity of a financial crisis. The relationship between economic growth and environmental sustainability has been widely studied in the publications of the past decade (Cumming & von Cramon-Taubadel, 2018 ; Kurniawan et al., 2021 ; Samimi et al., 2011 ; Sethi et al., 2020 ). So far, the economic growth has been dissociated from SD and CE to improve human well-being (Arrow et al., 2012 ; Cumming & von Cramon-Taubadel, 2018 ; Lawn & Clarke, 2010 ) causing new socio-economic problems and environmental degradation, while an integrated approach could light the transition to a sustainable and circular society. Jackson and Victor ( 2011 ) argue that “the financial-economic crisis and environmental problems as symptoms of deeper cultural problems in modern capitalist societies” with obsession on productivity growth and environmental pollution as undesirable outputs (Yue et al., 2019 ), extraction and consumption of natural resources (Ahmad et al., 2020 ), and higher consumer consumption. Geels ( 2013 ) concludes that today’s modern society with financial, socio-economic and environmental problems are facing a “triple crisis” that signals the possibility of improving circularity and sustainable transition, if society will recognize deeper structural and cultural roots that are causing global warming. Calisto Friant et al. ( 2021 ) states that Europe, in a line with CE, focuses on growth and competitiveness rather than human well-being and ecosystem health and does not address the core socio-ecological challenges of the twenty-first century.

The EU has a fundamental and unique climate policy framework since 2000 with ambitious GHG emission targets set for 2020, 2030, and 2050. The ultimate goal is to become the first climate-neutral continent in the world by 2050 (European Commission, 2020 ). The global pandemic shifted national policies from environmental to public health course and the impact to the countries’ economies and environment is not incontrovertible while the demand for critical analysis of CE in the context of financial crisis is growing. It was clear that the COVID-19 crisis had affected climate-related investment negatively across all sectors. Around 40% large firms and SME’s decided not invest on climate-related measures (European Investment Bank, 2021 ). Additionally, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused an energy crisis in Europe requiring significant measures to take mitigating market volatility. Current financial crisis gives scientists unique opportunity to analyze crisis impact to EU’s the sustainable development and CE policies. The CE concept was introduced in 2015 after the global financial crisis happened and the economy was in a full recovery speed. As a result, the CE policy was having favorable conditions for stable growth without any eruptions from the external environment. Now EU countries are maintaining the consequences caused by the COVID-19 situation, reacting and shifting energy policy to reduce EU’s energy sector dependency on imports from the Russia and alongside keeping the same path for CE’s objectives implementation.

A summary of literature review results presents the impact of the COVID-19 on the environment and the economy (see Fig.  3 ).

COVID-19 positive and negative impact on the environment and economic (prepared by authors (Baldasano, 2020 ; Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2020 ; European Environment Agency, 2020 ; European Investment Bank, 2021 ; Gama et al., 2021 ; Ibn-Mohammed et al., 2021 ; Menut et al., 2020 ; Reinsdorf et al., 2020 ; Samimi et al., 2011 ; Sharif et al., 2020 ; Smith et al., 2021 ; J. Wang et al., 2021 ; Yu et al., 2020 ; Yue et al., 2019 ; Zheng et al., 2020 )

It is difficult to compare the impact of the global financial crisis and the crisis caused the COVID-19, because of their impact on social and economic activities, but some similarities can be found. National lockdown caused by COVID-19 improve air quality and have a positive impact on the environment (Baldasano, 2020 ; Filonchyk et al., 2020 ; Gama et al., 2021 ; Menut et al., 2020 ; Shi & Brasseur, 2020 ; J. Wang et al., 2021 ) by reducing energy demand, use of fossil fuels and CO 2 emissions as it happened during the global financial crisis of 2008–2009. It is estimated that globally CO 2 emissions might fall by 8% or 2.6 GtCO 2 in 2020 and would be the largest reduction ever and the lowest level since 2010 (IEA, 2020 ). Across the European Union, annual CO 2 emissions fell by 10% relative to 2019. Lower electricity demand drove a more than 20% decline in coal-fired power generation and increased the share of renewables in electricity generation to 39%. However, the prediction of the growing energy consumption and demand in the long run might be caused by market recovery and higher consumption (Global Energy Perspective 2022 ; IEA, 2020 ) as it was found during the economic recovery period in 2010. Travel restrictions allowed not only improve air quality, but also helped reduce noise pollution in the cities (Smith et al., 2021 ). Scientists are divided into different groups questioning is there going to be continuous waves of COVID-19 virus. Events of past months confirmed that the awareness about ongoing virus needed to be stepped aside when the Russia–Ukraine war had begun and new environmental treats arose due to intensive military actions and combats happening putting world into a new and unpredictable environmental crisis to defeat.

The pandemic, the slowdown in China, raising inflation, and energy crisis causing an increase in cost-of-living prices, and ongoing war are raising future global economic stability questions. In October 2022, the International Monetary Fund ( 2022 ) published The World Economic Outlook with the prediction of the global economy slow growth by 2.7% in 2023—0.5% lower than the 3.2% growth in 2022. The significant economic slowdown has shown in the largest economies: a GDP contraction in US and EU, prolonged COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown in China, growing real estate crisis. Lessons learned from the 2008–2009 financial crisis allowed the financial sector and governments to react rapidly to minimize the economic results according to the financial market’s reaction to the spread of COVID-19 (Brada et al., 2021 ; Sharif et al., 2020 ) and raising inflation. Aggressive policy actions from central banks such as constantly increasing interest rates kept the global financial systems from failing into crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic (World Bank, 2021 ) with an assurance of a timely return of inflation to the 2% medium-term target. There is no doubt that public health during a pandemic is the top priority, but the necessity for economic recovery with stimulus packages raise questions about necessity of focusing more on resilient and low carbon CE instead of rapid economic recovery and growth (Ibn-Mohammed et al., 2021 ). The vast majority of the government policies implemented during the pandemic are more “rescue” than “recovery” and pay little attention to sustainability, climate change, and resilience. Only a few members of the EU (Spain, Germany, France), United Kingdom, and Canada COVID-19 stimulus “green” packages support more promising sustainable transition (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2020 ; Vivid Economics, 2020 ). Also, European Investment Bank ( 2021 ) report confirms that only 30% of the EU’s long-term budget and COVID-19 recovery fund known as NextGenerationEU which totals about 547 billion Euro will be spent on climate objectives. This confirms the common tendency between world economies—according to the Green Stimulus Index report (Vivid Economics, 2020 ) 17 major economies announced economic stimulus packages in total worth 11.8 trillion U.S. dollars. Roughly 3.5 trillion U.S. dollars (30%) in the announced stimulus will focus on long-term recovery in environmentally intensive sectors for climate change, biodiversity and local pollution, while the rest of the stimulus package (8.3 trillion U.S. dollars) focuses on non-environmentally relevant sectors. Emerging economies such as China, India, Mexico, and Brazil along with Russia depend on environmental intensive sectors such as high carbon industries, energy sectors and unsustainable agriculture practices. The most notable examples of the COVID-19 response measures are likely to support the current trajectory of manufacturing, energy industries and agriculture sectors with significant deregulation, tax cuts, or subsidies and are likely to worsen environmental outcomes. This implies that economic interests again overcome environmental interests and in the long term period, will not have a positive impact on the environment. As a result, by the end of the pandemic, we might have an even bigger climate crisis than we are having now and this will lead to a bigger economic and social exclusion between different social groups and countries with developed and emerging economies.

The pandemic only sharpened the global circularity problem and shattered the core sustaining pillars by increasing the demand of medical supplies (Yu et al., 2020 ), use of single use plastic (Nielsen et al., 2019 ), and increased amount of hazardous waste (Zheng et al., 2020 ) in 2020. In some cases, the amount of medical waste increased by 350–370% (Klemeš et al., 2020 ). Furthermore, COVID-19 has further enhanced the need to reflect on social behavior and individual lifestyles and how it impacts the environment and pollution. The consumer exaggerated reaction to the pandemic and announced lockdown. In the situation of panic buying, consumers’ decisions are influenced by their peers’ choices (seeing long queues of hoarders in front of the supermarket, unmeasured high demand of certain products, news on the internet and television) by giving less attention to pro-environmental purchasing choices (Zheng et al., 2020 ), changes the perception and created uncertainty about future supply based on their observations (Tsao et al., 2019 ). Changed consumer behavior and a higher need for single-use plastic could put the world into a new environment crisis after COVID-19.

Sustainable supply chains could be a solution to solving the consumption caused environmental crisis and could help to avoid raw materials delays, increased logistic costs, stoppage of production, import and export-related problems that occurred during the pandemic and sharpened global supply and demand issues (Chakraborty & Maity, 2020 ; Golroudbary et al., 2019 ; Hossain et al., 2022 ). Changes in the supply chain to make it more sustainable and flexible could be implemented by taking responsibility and optimizing the sustainable transition through a supply chain organization framework and infrastructure (Dwivedi et al., 2021 ; Sassanelli et al., 2020 ). The ability to flexibly allocate resources gives a better position to business companies and governance to deal with any environmental or international trade issues and design more sustainable offerings to consumers (Gelhard & von Delft, 2015 ). One of the benefits of the sustainable supply chain are the flexibility at the process level through logistic sub-systems and controls which helps to minimize various costs of green/remanufactured products, including energy, labor, material, and logistic costs (Bag & Rahman, 2023 ).

It is obvious that countries are economically affected by the pandemic and government, society, and business sectors might be focused on rapid economic recovery and not environment protection or further CE implementation. The recovery from the pandemic provides a unique opportunity for economic transformation to carbon neutral and smart green technologies. Yet, uncertainties and financial strains could keep World economies from embarking on the necessary transformation. Countries and cities will have to evaluate the current situation and make strategic decisions for the future CE development.

4 Discussion

This paper highlights the importance of raising environmental issues while countries mostly focus on solving urbanization, resource extraction, economic growth, increasing production and consumption problems. In this context, CE was proposed as an instrument, which could resolve climate change problems while ensuring stable economic growth. Since the introduction of the CE concept in the EU policies, CE have had favorable conditions: stable global economic growth, high local governments, society and interest group involvement. The pandemic is the first serious test of the continuous stability of the CE and pro-environmental policies. While ongoing Russia–Ukraine war could test how far we are willing to go and invest to maintain the current sustainability and CE direction achieving the energy freedom from Russia’s natural resources and ensuring economic stability in the region (Pereira et al., 2022 ). Data analysis on the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 and economic recovery period helped understand and more effectively moderate the near future of the CE policies during and after any occurring crisis. Results confirms that economic recovery period correlates with a rise of energy intensity, while increase on FDI and R&D helped to manage and reduce GHG emissions effectively. However, to this day, countries’ economies rely on natural resource and the future financial crisis impact on the environment remains significant. Countries’ economies transition to renewable resources could not only reduce impact to the climate, but also reduce emissions differences during and after financial crises.

While the COVID-19 impact confirms the improvement of the environment, it has also sharpened circularity pillars: suspensions on plastic ban policy, increased use of single-use plastic, hazardous and medical waste raise more serious concerns about our future. The economic stimulus packages distributed with the 70% of 11.8 trillion U.S. dollars to non-environmentally relevant sectors confirms that countries are more concerned about rapid economic recovery than the growing global environmental crises. The EU confirms that societal resilience, dependency on a resilient environmental support system, reliance on single-use plastic, and low oil price resulting from lockdowns have negative consequences (European Environment Agency, 2021 ).

The Russia – Ukraine war could be a turning point to change the public policy, justify and support more the transition to the clean-energy since shocks and crises can drive political processes. This shock could be used as a window to accelerate renewable energy technologies to lose the dependency of fossil fuels by orientating global investments toward sustainability. However, taken actions demonstrates otherwise, the world keeps struggling to strike the balance between the energy sustainability and energy security resulting global coal demand increase by 1% (IEA, 2022c ). Furthermore, the EU Parliament had to take political compromise and included gas and nuclear energy in the sustainable finance taxonomy pack. Since January 2023, the Complimentary Delegated Act announced nuclear energy and fossil gas as low-carbon alternatives contributing to climate change objectives and decarbonization of the Union’s economy (European Comission 2022 ). This decision goes against the EU sustainable development approach, including the Paris agreement and the European Green Deal.

The financial crisis impact on the environment has analyzed only by few studies and requires a broader and deeper analysis focusing on countries’ environmental policies changes, consumer behavior changes in the crisis situation, and how they re-share pro-environmental decisions. Future research on systematic data collection of implied innovations, technologies along with social-economic and environmental indicators are needed to help scientists simulate the possible future economic crisis scenarios, political decisions impact on the economic growth and how it impacts environment.

5 Conclusion

COVID-19 and the Russia–Ukraine war have highlighted the fragility of the sustainability principles and countries high fragility on the energy security. Data analysis from the previous global financial crisis of 2008–2009 helps to modular the possible impact to the environment and countries actions seeking rapid economic recovery. Results from previous studies confirm, that short-term economic recovery policies are unlikely to be sustainable in the long-run. Completed literature review and data analysis results confirm that the financial crisis had a positive impact on GHG emissions reduction in 2009, which can be explained by lower economic activities. Furthermore, countries were able to manage and reduce GHG emissions consistently through the whole period of the analysis with strong commitment funding R&D activities and being able to attract growing amount of FDI. The European Economic Recovery Plan and its strong focus on renewable energy helped increase the renewable energy share in the gross final energy consumption. Furthermore, the EU is strongly committed mitigating energy crisis by adopting REPowerEU Plan, European Gas Demand Reduction Plan, diversifying energy supply sources by importing liquefied natural gas and increasing deliveries of pipeline gas, and putting more investments in the energy infrastructure. However, at the moment the most significant EU focus is energy market stabilization, leaving social, economy and CE principles implementation in the back.

Global lockdown had a positive impact on air quality—reduced CO 2 emissions and noise pollution. Still, COVID-19 along with Russia—Ukraine was have caused an even bigger financial and energy crisis than the one that happened in 2008–-2009. The European Union (27) GDP contracted by -6.1% and it is 1.4 times lower than in 2009. The European Union must focus on effective synergy between two strategic goals and its implementation—ensure rapid economy recovery in the context of the ongoing CE policy defined in the Green Deal documentation. The EU is strongly committed transitioning energy production to more renewable sources and reducing energy dependency from Russia, but other aspects of sustainability and CE policies remain uncertain. Evidence shows that the vast majority of government policies implemented during the pandemic focus on pandemic control measures rather than sustainability and resilience. Only 3 European Union countries: Spain, Germany, and France proposed COVID-19 stimulus “green” packages to support a sustainable transition. Major emerging economies (China, India, Russia, Mexico, and Brazil) economic stimulus packages focus on rapid economic recovery and quick returns on non-environmentally relevant sectors. These countries are likely to support the current trajectory of manufacturing, energy industries and agriculture sectors and they are likely to worsen environmental outcomes. China, India and Russia are leaders on global CO 2 emissions and their impact on climate change in the next few years is going to be significant. Ongoing Russia–Ukraine war has a significant effect on climate change and removed achieved emissions reductions during the pandemic. However, it significantly shifted the political narrative and gave positive signs of transitioning from a linear to a circular economy and focusing on solutions to increase renewable energy-related projects implementation.

Following the conducted analysis and completed literature review authors believes that successful continuity of the circular economy framework and resilience should be based on the combination of data analysis, forecast of future scenarios and risk management framework. It would help to stay consistent and focus on the current circular economy governance, key objectives and minimize negative impact of any potential crisis.

This paper highlights the ongoing confrontation between the economy and the environment. So far, countries’ actions on sustainable transitions are insufficient and require drastic decisions and economic changes focusing not only on the short-term solutions. This paper is the first step in analyzing the financial crisis impact on sustainability and circular economy implementation. Further scientific and statistical analyzes are needed.

Data availability

All data generated and analyzed during the current study are included in this published article and also can be available in the EUROSTAT database.

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Feiferytė-Skirienė, A., Stasiškienė, Ž. Measuring economic crises impact transitioning to a circular economy. Environ Dev Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-023-03367-x

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Australia’s carbon credits system a failure on global scale, study finds

Researchers find carbon offsets approach, which is supposed to regenerate scrubby outback forests, was not reducing emissions as promised

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Australia’s main carbon offsets method is a failure on a global scale and doing little if anything to help address the climate crisis, according to a major new study.

Research by 11 academics found the most popular technique used to create offsets in Australia, known as “human-induced regeneration” and pledged to regenerate scrubby outback forests, had mostly not improved tree cover as promised between about 2015 and 2022.

The peer-reviewed study , published in the nature journal Communications Earth & Environment, analysed 182 projects in arid and semi-desert areas and found forest cover had either barely grown or gone backwards in nearly 80%.

The academics said it meant these projects were therefore not reducing emissions as promised, and polluting companies that bought offsets created through these projects were often not reducing their impact on the climate as they claimed.

They said this was a globally significant problem as Australia’s forest regeneration method is the world’s fifth biggest nature-based offsets program, with projects covering nearly 42m hectares, an area larger than Japan.

More than 37m carbon credits – each meant to be worth a tonne of CO2 drawn from the atmosphere and worth between $750m and $1bn – had been issued for these projects by June last year.

The authors of the study include Andrew Macintosh, an environmental law professor at the Australian National University (ANU), a former head of a carbon credit integrity assurance body and more recently a sharp critic of the management of the scheme. Two years ago he described it as a “sham” and a fraud on taxpayers and the environment .

What are carbon credits?

Carbon offsets are used by the government and polluting companies as an alternative to cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

Instead of reducing their own pollution, they can choose to buy offsets - known as Australian carbon credit units (ACCUs) - that are meant to represent a reduction in emissions elsewhere.

Each carbon credit represents one tonne of carbon dioxide that has either been stopped from going in the atmosphere, or sucked out of it.

Methods approved to generate carbon credits in Australia include regenerating native forest that has been cleared, protecting a forest that would otherwise have been cleared (known as “avoided deforestation”) and capturing and using emissions that leak from landfill sites to generate electricity.

Credits were bought by the government through the $4.5bn taxpayer-funded emissions reduction scheme or, increasingly, by polluters on the private market. 

The researchers said the findings add to growing scientific literature that highlighted “the practical limitations of offsets and the potential for offset schemes to credit abatement that is non-existent, non-additional and potentially impermanent”.

Megan Evans, a senior lecturer in environmental policy at the University of New South Wales in Canberra and a co-author of the new study, said the researchers found there was “nowhere near the forest cover that you should see” given the number of carbon credits issued.

“What this means is that the projects are not actually sequestering the amount of carbon claimed, and we’ve got a whole bunch of carbon credits in the system that don’t represent one tonne of CO2,” she said.

“Most of these credits are being used to offset heavy emitters under the safeguard mechanism, so we’re not actually reducing carbon emissions at all. The overall outcome is we’re increasing the amount of carbon pollution.

“We’re ultimately getting worse outcomes for the climate than if we didn’t have these [forest regeneration] projects.”

The researchers called on the Australian government to stop issuing carbon credits to regeneration projects in uncleared areas “for the sake of the integrity of Australia’s carbon market and the country’s decarbonisation efforts”.

The Clean Energy Regulator, which manages the scheme, said it had confidence in the integrity of the carbon credit scheme and the human-induced regeneration method. “A number of reviews have confirmed the integrity of the HIR method,” a spokesperson said.

The climate change minister, Chris Bowen told the ABC’s RN Breakfast on Wednesday that a review of the carbon credit scheme that he commissioned from Ian Chubb, a former Australian chief scientist, had backed the integrity of the system .

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Bowen said Chubb found the scheme was “basically sound”, but needed some reforms that were being implemented. The Chubb review was not asked to examine individual projects.

Bowen said the regulator had also asked Cris Brack, an honorary ANU associate professor and forest researcher, to review the performance of five-year-old projects and found they were “demonstrating regeneration, and proponents are implementing the project activities”.

“There’s been other checks in relation to the significant increase in vegetation that we’re looking for and it has found that increasing vegetation exists,” Bowen said.

The carbon credits generated through forest regeneration can be used by companies to meet emissions reductions goals under the safeguard mechanism , a Coalition policy revamped under Labor to require the country’s 215 biggest industrial polluting facilities to reduce their emissions intensity by up to 4.9% a year.

The projects analysed in the new paper are mostly in dry outback areas in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia. They do not involve tree planting, but are said to regenerate native forests by reducing the impact of grazing by livestock and feral animals.

Critics, which have included the Australian Conservation Foundation , say research suggests grazing by livestock and feral animals mostly does not affect “woody vegetation cover”. The study said the total amount of woody vegetation cover in the areas analysed increased by less than 1% after grazing was reduced.

The researchers examined 75 projects that they said, based on the number of credits they received, should have had near 100% forest cover, but found the actual coverage in 2022 was only 21%. This was only a 1.8% increase since the projects were registered, they said.

Don Butler, an ANU ecologist who led the statistical analysis, said the changes largely mirrored what happened in nearby areas not included in the projects.

David Eldridge, another co-author and a longtime NSW government scientist now at the University of NSW’s Centre for Ecosystem Science, said the results of the study were not a surprise. “They align perfectly with what decades of research in Australia’s rangelands suggests would occur,” he said.

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Why BlackRock’s C.E.O. Wants to Rethink Retirement

Larry Fink, who leads the world’s biggest asset manager, warns in his annual investor letter that an aging population will soon pose huge economic troubles.

By Andrew Ross Sorkin ,  Ravi Mattu ,  Bernhard Warner ,  Sarah Kessler ,  Michael J. de la Merced ,  Lauren Hirsch and Ephrat Livni

BlackRock’s chief wants to rethink a fiscal time bomb

As the chairman and C.E.O. of the asset management giant BlackRock, Larry Fink commands attention from companies and governments, helping spearhead movements like socially driven business and the need for companies to fight climate change.

In his latest letter to investors, published on Tuesday, Fink weighs in on a new topic: a looming global retirement crisis, and what can be done to address it.

The way retirement is handled around the world needs to change, Fink writes. Many countries will hit an aging tipping point within the next 20 years, according to his letter, but most people aren’t saving enough for when they stop working.

In the U.S. in particular, people are living longer, a trend that’s likely to grow given the advent of weight loss drugs like Wegovy, Fink writes. But he adds that four in 10 Americans don’t have $400 in emergency savings, let alone proper retirement funds.

“America needs an organized, high-level effort to ensure that future generations can live out their final years with dignity,” he writes, much as tech C.E.O.s and Washington banded together to shore up U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. Fink adds that he has a good vantage point for the problem, given that over half of BlackRock’s $10 trillion in assets are for retirement.

Fink said he wanted to kick off some hard conversations , and offered some initial suggestions:

Setting up retirement systems to cover all workers, even gig and part-time laborers, as 20 states have done;

Encouraging more employers to offer incentives like matching funds and making it easier to transfer 401(k) savings;

Creating systems that allow for 401(k)-like plans that provide pension-like predictable income streams, to reverse what Fink called a historical shift “from financial certainty to financial uncertainty.”

Fink also raises a politically fraught idea: raising the retirement age. The Social Security Administration has said that by 2034, it won’t be able to pay out full benefits, he notes:

No one should have to work longer than they want to. But I do think it’s a bit crazy that our anchor idea for the right retirement age — 65 years old — originates from the time of the Ottoman Empire.

Fink also defended climate-minded investing. His firm has become a target for conservatives for embracing the approach known as E.S.G. But the BlackRock chief said that the transition to green energy was inevitable. “It’s a mega force, a major economic trend being driven by nations representing 90 percent of the world’s G.D.P.,” he writes. (That said, he said he had stopped using the term “E.S.G.” because of its political toxicity.)

He is embracing what he calls “energy pragmatism.” That involves acknowledging the need for energy security, which for many countries will involve relying on hydrocarbons for years, along with cleaner energy sources. “Nobody will support decarbonization if it means giving up heating their home in the winter or cooling it in the summer,” he wrote. “Or if the cost of doing so is prohibitive.”

Fink added that BlackRock hasn’t advocated divesting from traditional energy companies, in part because some are investing in next-generation green tech like capturing carbon from the air.

HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING

The U.S. and Britain impose sanctions on elite Chinese hackers. The countries accused Beijing’s top spy agency of putting malware in key American infrastructure, including electrical grids and defense systems, and of stealing voting rolls for millions of British citizens. The moves represent an escalation of cyberconflict between Western powers and China.

Adam Neumann reportedly makes a formal bid for WeWork. The bankrupt co-working company’s former C.E.O. has offered more than $500 million to buy the business, according to The Wall Street Journal. It isn’t clear how Neumann will finance the proposal — Third Point, a hedge fund his lawyers had cited as a potential partner , isn’t involved — or whether WeWork’s management team will accept his approach.

A lawsuit by Elon Musk’s X against a research group is dismissed. A federal judge rejected claims that the Center for Countering Digital Hate , which published reports finding a rise in hate speech on the platform X since Musk took it over, had violated X’s terms of service. The lawsuit, the judge said, was “about punishing the defendants for their speech.”

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapses. It was not immediately clear how many vehicles were on the bridge when a cargo ship rammed into the structure early on Tuesday. A White House official told Bloomberg that there was no indication of nefarious intent.

The Trump stock winners and losers

Meme-stock mania is back, and this time it has a political spin.

Investors and Donald Trump’s supporters are piling into Trump Media & Technology Group ahead of its first day of trading, extending a torrid rally that has bolstered the former president’s net worth on paper by roughly $4 billion .

Trump Media is the parent company of Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social. It closed its merger on Monday with a listed shell company, Digital World Acquisition Corp., creating a kind of proxy for investors to back a digital media business bearing his name as he runs for president.

“At some level, I’ve thought that many of the holders of D.W.A.C. viewed the stock as something akin to a call option on MAGA,” Steve Sosnick, the chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, told DealBook.

The rally has transformed Trump’s finances at a time when his business empire remains under threat from multiple legal troubles. The stock price of the loss-making company in its final day trading as D.W.A.C. spiked on Monday after a New York appeals court gave Trump a lifeline : It reduced the bond he needs to pay to protect his business interests while he appeals a civil fraud case to $175 million.

Trump has a big say in what happens next at Trump Media. He holds a class of shares that give him at least 55 percent voting power on some key board decisions. One question: Would Trump cash out — either to pay his legal bills, top up his campaign war chest or bank his return — once the lockup period expires in September? Or, would he lean on the board to waive the traditional six-month lockout period?

The board is filled with loyalists, including his elder son, Donald Trump Jr.; Devin Nunes, a Republican former representative of California; and Linda McMahon and Robert Lighthizer, who both served during the Trump administration.

Trump’s next move could move the market. He holds about 60 percent of Trump Media’s stock. Selling all or some of that stake could torpedo the stock, leaving its large band of retail investors on the hook.

Even if that gets regulators’ attention, pro-Trump shareholders may not care. “I can’t recall any company so driven by external political factors, certainly not in the U.S.,” Sosnick notes. “So even though allowing an early termination of the lockup would be counter to many shareholders’ financial best interests, they might not mind it anyway.”

Meanwhile, bets against Trump have soured. Traders who have shorted D.W.A.C.’s stock have racked up mark-to-market losses of about $96 million this year, Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of S3 Partners, a data firm, told DealBook. The recent rally, he said, “will definitely squeeze” them further.

“There’s no accountability on who has access to it and how it’s being used.”

— Emma Shortis, a senior researcher in international and security affairs at the Australia Institute, on SpaceX’s Starlink system. A Bloomberg investigation found a robust black market trade in service for the satellite internet system in countries where its use isn’t authorized.

What would fix Boeing?

Boeing finally buckled. Its C.E.O., Dave Calhoun, is planning to leave . The news came almost three months after a panel blew off a 737 Max jet and airlines, regulators and investors largely turned on the company.

But is a leadership shake-up enough to fix America’s aerospace leader after years of problems?

Boeing hopes that cleaning house will draw a line under the crisis. The company said on Monday that Calhoun — who took over in 2020 after a different safety crisis and vowed to fix the company — will be gone by the end of the year. The company chairman, Larry Kellner, will leave the board in May once his term expires, and its C.O.O., Stephanie Pope, will immediately replace Stan Deal, who is retiring, as head of the commercial airplane division.

Investors sent Boeing’s stock up on Tuesday, despite the company losing market share to a rival, Airbus, in recent years.

But its problems run deep. Lina Khan, the F.T.C. chair, wrote recently in Foreign Policy magazine that the decision to allow Boeing to become a “de facto national champion” by buying McDonnell Douglas in 1997 was “catastrophic.”

The deal slowed innovation, with R&D spending consistently below Airbus. Engineers came to be seen as “a cost, not an asset,” and too much work was outsourced or sent offshore. Boeing became too big to fail and vulnerable to foreign influence, she said.

Critics say fundamental changes are needed. Boeing demonstrates “the curse of bigness,” Tim Wu, a former antitrust official in the Biden administration now at Columbia Law School, told DealBook.

Boeing’s shortcomings are akin to the monopoly concerns in Big Tech and the telecoms sector, and regulators should consider a breakup, he added, pointing to the split of AT&T in 1984 as a precedent. “I wonder if Boeing would do it itself in light of its inefficiencies,” Wu said.

The U.S. is still highly reliant upon Boeing. More than a third of the company’s revenues comes from government contracts, Richard Loeb, an expert on government contracting law and a former government official, told DealBook. “They’re a sole-source supplier,” he said.

Such a deep relationship is problematic, with too much oversight ceded to the company over decades of deregulation.

What’s next? Pope was once seen as Calhoun’s heir apparent , but analysts now say that the company may need to look externally. General Electric , Calhoun’s onetime employer that’s gone through its own split, could be a model.

THE SPEED READ

The bankrupt crypto exchange FTX agreed to sell most of its stake in Anthropic , the artificial intelligence start-up, for $884 million to several buyers, including an Abu Dhabi investor. (WSJ)

The electric vehicle maker Fisker said talks for an investment from another manufacturer had ended, putting its future in doubt. Meanwhile, shares in a rival, Lucid , jumped after an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund agreed to another $1 billion investment. (Bloomberg)

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed into law a bill that would effectively bar some social media accounts for children under 14. (NYT)

“Russia has finally admitted Western sanctions are hitting its oil exports ” (Business Insider)

Best of the rest

Meta’s efforts to compete for artificial intelligence researchers reportedly include extending job offers without an interview and Mark Zuckerberg personally writing emails to employees of rivals. (The Information)

“Inside a C.E.O.’s Bold Claims About Her Hot Fintech Start-Up ” (NYT)

Federal agents raided homes tied to the hip-hop mogul Sean Combs , who faces lawsuits accusing him of sexual assault and sex trafficking. (NYT)

We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected] .

Andrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist and the founder and editor at large of DealBook. He is a co-anchor of CNBC’s "Squawk Box" and the author of “Too Big to Fail.” He is also a co-creator of the Showtime drama series "Billions." More about Andrew Ross Sorkin

Ravi Mattu is the managing editor of DealBook, based in London. He joined The New York Times in 2022 from the Financial Times, where he held a number of senior roles in Hong Kong and London. More about Ravi Mattu

Bernhard Warner is a senior editor for DealBook, a newsletter from The Times, covering business trends, the economy and the markets. More about Bernhard Warner

Sarah Kessler is an editor for the DealBook newsletter and writes features on business and how workplaces are changing. More about Sarah Kessler

Michael de la Merced joined The Times as a reporter in 2006, covering Wall Street and finance. Among his main coverage areas are mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcies and the private equity industry. More about Michael J. de la Merced

Lauren Hirsch joined The Times from CNBC in 2020, covering deals and the biggest stories on Wall Street. More about Lauren Hirsch

Ephrat Livni reports from Washington on the intersection of business and policy for DealBook. Previously, she was a senior reporter at Quartz, covering law and politics, and has practiced law in the public and private sectors.   More about Ephrat Livni