nature Magazine – August 24, 2023 issue: In this week’s issue, Jedediah Brodie and his colleagues examine protected areas in mega-diverse southeast Asia to assess their effects on tropical biodiversity. 

Want a sustainable future? Then look to the world’s cities

In a rapidly urbanizing world, what happens in cities matters — and sustainability success stories show what can be achieved when researchers and policymakers work together.

More than half of the world’s population lives in cities, and that proportion is set to grow. By 2050, another two billion people will be urban dwellers, the United Nations estimates. Cities lie at the nexus of all aspects of human development, from building thriving economies to coping with climate change.

Earth’s hottest month: these charts show what happened in July and what comes next

The planet has warmed 1.2 ºC on average, but that’s enough to produce big extremes.

From wilting saguaros in Arizona and hot-tub-like temperatures off the coast of Florida to increased heat-related hospitalizations in Europe and agricultural losses in China, last month felt unusually hot. It was: several teams have now confirmed that July 2023 was the hottest month in recorded history. And there’s more to come.

July is typically the hottest month of the year, and this July shattered records going back as far as 1850 by around 0.25 °C. Overall, the average global temperature was 1.54 °C above the preindustrial average for July, according to Berkeley Earth, a non-profit group in California that is one of several organizations tracking global warming. It’s a seemingly small increase, but what many people across the world actually experienced was a bout of long and often brutal heat waves.