There is currently considerable interest in what degrowth compatible business practices may be and what they may look like. However, while the embeddedness of a degrowth business in the wider environment has been recognised, and this affects theorising of practices and principles, there remains a need to seriously consider the inter-connection between degrowth business and its surrounding environment as a physical and cultural space. To avoid merely hinting at geographical concepts such as space, place, and location, a better approach is establishing a dialogue between degrowth business and geography. To do this, I use the degrowth business framework and connect its elements with the concepts of space, place, and location. This analysis shows that each of the elements is intimately inter-related with geographical concepts and needs to be thought of, theorised, and implemented as such. I conclude that geographical concepts should not be merely implied when theorising degrowth business. Rather, looking at degrowth business through various lenses provided by geographies is indispensable for making degrowth reality in diverse locations.

The year of 2021 has witnessed many extreme weather events across the world that have shocked and challenged human society, in particular for the populous cities, challenging progress on sustainable city development. In the comment we highlighted the record-breaking rainstorm that is considered to happen only “once-in-a-thousand-years” on 20 July 2021 in Zhengzhou, China; and a series of short and long-term resilience enhancement and risk reducing measures to climate change and natural hazard risks. We found that increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events caused by human-induced climate change challenges progress on sustainable city development, but could also accelerate activities to enable cities to become more resilient. This comment is essential to advance towards the sustainable city development goal (SDG 11) in China's mega cities, as well as informing progress for other global cities.

The Ulan Buh Desert is one of the eight deserts in China that provides wind erosion prevention service (i.e., the ecosystem; vegetation, production, and construction activities that promote sand fixation). It is significant for the construction of the national ecological barrier, and the protection of the ecological security in the Yellow River and North China. In this study, we selected two representative years (2008 and 2018) and quantified wind erosion prevention service from the Ulan Buh Desert using the RWEQ model. Meanwhile, the HYSPLIT model was used to simulate the spatial flow process from the service supply area to the beneficiary area and to determine its scope. The specific dust reduction amount in the beneficiary area was then calculated. The energy and the time-space relation of wind erosion prevention service in the areas that receive benefits from Ulan Buh Desert were compared before and after implementing environmental restoration measures. The results showed that: (1) the total amount of wind erosion prevention in the Ulan Buh Desert in 2018 was 2.12 × 10¹⁰ kg, which was 5.17 times higher than that in 2008; (2) in 2018, the distribution density of the flow path of wind erosion prevention service was lower than that in 2008, and the flow paths in each year were concentrated in the beneficiary areas with the path distribution frequency of less than 10%; (3) the total dust reduction in the downwind area of the Ulan Buh Desert in 2018 was higher than that in 2008, totaling 15.54 million tons. Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Shanxi Province had the most significant amount of dust reduction.

Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum) is an important crop for generating fiber, biofuel and other bioproducts. Brazil is the largest sugarcane producer in the world; however, limited knowledge is available with respect to soil erosion in the sugarcane cropping system. This study reviews the soil erosion rates in sugarcane cropping and evaluates the effects of soil management and land conversion on soil erosion. Eighteen studies (using conventional tillage) reporting 43 outcomes of soil erosion rates were examined using the Scopus® database. Different methods were used to measure soil erosion yielded different soil loss rates; highest values were recorded in the natural rain method, i.e., experimental plots with a median of 28 Mg ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹, were obtained followed by modeling with 9.3 Mg ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ and simulated rain with 2 Mg ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹. The median soil loss using all data (n = 43) obtained by the three methods was 7.2 Mg ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹. The soil type increases soil erosion; the sugarcane cropping system is practiced over the most erodible Brazilian soils (e.g., Ultisols and Oxisols) where sand fraction is dominant, particularly fine sand. Most studies focused on rainsplash and interrill erosion. However, rill, ephemeral and permanent gullies should be examined, particularly in sugarcane-cropping areas.

As human populations become concentrated in larger, more intensely urbanized areas connected through globalization, the relationships of cities to their surrounding landscapes are open to social, ecological, and economic reinterpretation. In particular, the value of access to nature in the form of nearby undeveloped wildland to urban populations implies a relatively novel type of synergistic city-region relationship. We develop a robust and replicable metric - the urban-wildland juxtaposition (UWJ) - that quantifies critical dimensions of the juxtaposition of the urbanicity of cities with the quantity of nearby unbuilt wildlands, based on the spatial proximity and relative intensities of these two contrasting system types. Using a distance-decay gravity model, this analysis provides documentation on the calculation of the UWJ and its component metrics, urbanicity (U) and wildland (W) and then presents U, W, and UWJ metrics for 36 urbanized areas representing all regions of the U.S., providing the basis for comparisons and analysis. We explore the potential of the metric by testing correlations with “creative class” employment and public health measures. The UWJ has implications and potential applications for demographic, economic, social, and quality-of-life trends across the U.S. and internationally.

Modern environmental problems are the result of human-environment interaction in the process of industrialization. The relationship between economic development and environmental quality is an important aspect of understanding human-environment interaction and has been widely concerned by multidisciplinary researchers. Economic geography (EG) is a discipline that mainly focuses on the location and connections of economic activities. EG has developed to environmental economic geography (EEG) by incorporating environmental factors into its research framework, considering the operational mechanism of the co-evolution of economy and environment, and the dynamic process of green transition of techno-economic paradigms. Studying the resource and environmental effects of R&D, production, trade, and other aspects of the economic cycle is beneficial to realizing the “greening” economy. This paper traces the background and theoretical development path of EEG and elaborates on the interaction between EEG and other research paradigms on environmental problems. In recent years, the focuses of EEG are as follows: (1) the “location-environment” relationship of production from the perspective of local actors; (2) the “GVC/GPN-environment” relationship of multinational enterprises and space of flows from the perspective of the global network; (3) the “trade/circulation-environment” relationship from the perspective of national linkages; and (4) the co-evolution of the economic system and environment from the perspective of synergistic evolution, with a focus on innovation and institutional forces. The future development trend of EEG is combined with the endogenous growth theory and the sustainable development theory, mainly from the aspects of endogenous, system integration and multi-scale, to explain the differences in environmental issues of different regional economic activities, and to promote the development of EEG theory and interdisciplinary research, strengthening the construction of global and regional sustainable development system.

The Three-River Headwater Region (TRHR) of China is a typical representative of the alpine environment in the Central Asian plateau and the alpine grassland in the world. Grassland degradation is one of its serious ecological problems. The purpose of this study is to quantify the joint impacts of climate and human activities on grassland changes in TRHR after two phases of Ecological Conservation and Construction Project (Ecological Project). Grassland vegetation coverage is selected as an indicator for analyzing grassland changes. We adopt Sen+Mann-Kendall trend analysis, residual trend analysis and correlation analysis methods to analyze the trends in spatial-temporal changes and driving factors of grassland in TRHR from 2000 to 2019. The results show that: (1) The grassland has been mainly restored, and the degraded grassland area only accounts for 1.66% of TRHR. After the implementation of the first phase of the Ecological Project, the percentage of restored grassland area has significantly increased from 8.82% to 24.57%, and slightly decreased during the second phase. (2) The establishment of national nature reserves and the implementation of the Ecological Project have changed the situation that “the grassland inside the reserve is worse than that outside the reserve”. (3) Grassland restoration is mainly affected by the joint effects of climate and human activities. Nevertheless, grassland degradation is mainly affected by human activities such as overgrazing and grassland reclamation. All of these findings can enrich our understanding of grassland restoration in TRHR. Artificial measures have certain limitations in promoting grassland restoration. Natural restoration should be considered when human beings strengthen ecological conservation and transform their production and life styles.

China is a country largely affected by desertification. The main purpose of this article is to analyze interannual and seasonal changes in fractional vegetation cover (FVC) in the Mu Us Sandy Land (MUSL). It uses fused remote sensing data to quantitatively analyze the response of FVC to climate change and human activities. The results showed that desertification in the MUSL had improved over the past 20 years. Grade V desertification decreased from more than 60% in 2000 to about 15% in 2020. In some years, degradation appeared to be affected by climate factors and human activity, especially in the northwestern portion of the study area. The FVC in summer was slightly higher than that in autumn and far higher than recorded in spring and winter. Spatially, the northwestern and central parts of the study area were unstable, with high coefficients of variation. FVC gradually increased from northwest to southeast, and areas with the fastest increase in FVC were concentrated along the eastern and southern edges of the study area. The correlations between FVC and precipitation and dryness were slightly positive, but the correlation between FVC and temperature showed regional differences. The increase of population density is not a key factor limiting the growth of vegetation; the policy of “grazing prohibition, grazing rest, and rotational grazing” has allowed the restoration of vegetation; and afforestation is an effective way to promote the increase in FVC.