Lulu Zhang

United Nations University (UNU) | UNU · Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU-FLORES)

The nexus concept has considerably matured during the past decade. Numerous literature reviews have significantly contributed to taking stock of the advancements in knowledge and tool development to improve science-policy support on highly connected and interdependent resources. However, literature reviews often focus on specific sector-based nexus...

The frequency of extreme weather events has increased in the latest years in Europe. The recent consecutive droughts caused severe damage in many sectors and underlined the demand for adaptation. There is a need for a better understanding of the response of ecosystems to climate change and the consequences for key ecosystem services, such as water...

The transition from fossil-fuel-based internal combustion vehicles to electric vehicles plays a key role to decarbonize road transport and mitigate climate change. Even though this transition is still in its infancy, it is important to consider not only its environmental benefits but also its potential side effects. The current electric vehicle fle...

The frequency of extreme weather events has increased in the latest years. The recent droughts in Europe caused severe damage in many sectors and underlined the need for adaptation. This paper aims to support decision-making for climate adaptation in a low-mountainous region of central Germany by identifying the areas and ecosystems that are suscep...

The transition from fossil-fuel-based internal combustion vehicles to electric vehicles plays a key role to decarbonize road transport and mitigate climate change. Even though this transition is still in its infancy, it is important to consider not only its environmental benefits but also its potential side-effects. The current electric vehicle fle...

Oil palm dominates global oil production, trade, and consumption. Nigeria is one of the leading palm oil producers and consumers. A significant challenge of the palm oil industry is to reduce the environmental impacts (e.g. pollution and carbon footprint) and integrate a circular economy in operation. This study aims to comparatively quantify the e...

Oil palm is the largest source of livelihoods and vegetable oil consumption to most rural households of developing economies in Asia, Africa, and South America. The heavy reliance on fossil-fuel-based energy in palm oil production raises national concerns about reducing carbon emissions and achieving Nationally Determined Contributions in Nigeria....

Energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will increase significantly in the developing world. Scaling up bioenergy use and reducing GHG emissions is vital to achieving the Nationally Determined Contributions and advance the greener economy. This study investigated three types of palm oil processors to support technology adva...

This chapter is the collection of several examples, both in thematic and geographical sense, which manifest the need to address water and land management in an integrated way. It reviews irrigation and soil management techniques, performance assessment of irrigation as well as water delivery scheduling for irrigated agriculture. Water scarcity and...

Energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will increase significantly in the developing world. Scaling up bioenergy use and reducing GHG emissions is vital to achieving the Nationally Determined Contributions and advance the greener economy. This study explored the life cycle inventories of Nigeria’s palm oil processors towar...

Oil palm is expected to continue its dominance of global oil production, trade, and consumption. Nigeria will continue to play a dominate role in oil palm industry particularly on production and consumption. One of the biggest challenges to agricultural productivities is the need to reduce the environmental impacts and improves circularity in the o...

This introductory chapter explains why organic waste composting is considered as one of the best examples to demonstrate the benefits of nexus thinking. Current literature is rich with information covering various aspects of composting process. However, it mainly represents two distinct fields: waste from the management point of view and soil/agric...

The United Nations’ Agenda for Sustainable Development underlines 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with 169 targets. The lack of holistic knowledge on the interdependency between the SDGs and an interpretation of cause-and-effect relationships that connect the SDGs enormously challenges national policymakers that must implement that are in c...

Nature should be planted with CARE. This is a media article published at The Conversation UK based on scientific findings. You can also reach the original published article here: https://theconversation.com/planting-trees-must-be-done-with-care-it-can-create-more-problems-than-it-addresses-128259

The world's largest afforestation programs implemented by China made a great contribution to the global “greening up.” These programs have received worldwide attention due to its contribution towards achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, emerging studies have suggested that these campaigns, when not properly implement...

Soil erosion resulted from human activity and related land use and climate change threaten our societal and economic thriving. A major policy response has been putting in place to mitigate the effects of soil erosion, such as in Europe and Asia. The main objective of this work is to assess the impacts of the policy response in China – the implement...

Stakeholder participation is crucial in solving environmental problems, especially in rural areas. This research investigates multi-stakeholders environmental awareness and preferences for best management practices (BMPs) in water conservation zones of north China for tackling non-point source pollution issue. A sample of 287 stakeholders involving...

With increasing needs for water and food security and rapid urbanisation resulting from a booming global population, forests maintenance and development face great competition with other priorities. While we are losing forest resources at a high rate globally, afforestation efforts are made in some regions to offset this adverse effect. Afforestati...

Managing environmental resources in a nexus manner is typically denoted as a highly wicked problem. Such denotations are, however, barely based on clearly defined dimensions and degrees of wickedness. This hinders the application of effective policy and governance strategies to address nexus problems in practice. This study provides a conceptually...

Investing in sustainable land management and practices such as restoring degraded land can recover soil health and enhance soil functions and land productivity to provide critical ecological and economic benefits for human needs. We suggest investing in critical linkages that are closely linked to several problems. Smart investments in combating la...

Black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia L.) is a major tree species in China's large-scale afforestation. Despite its significance, black locust is underrepresented in sap flow literature; moreover, the published water consumption data might be biased. We applied two field methods to estimate water consumption of black locust during the growing seasons...

Pressing issues such as water and food security, health, peace, and poverty are deeply linked to land degradation. We use China’s major land restoration programs as a case offering perspective on the existing problems in China’s major policies for improving degraded land and maintaining land resources in three dimensions. The shortcomings and outco...

The Agricultural ecosystem provides a variety of goods and services for human society. Beyond the main functions of primary production and supporting rural livelihoods, agricultural activities also provide additional benefits to the environment such as maintaining water and soil resources and enhancing food security. The social, economic and ecolog...

China’s actions to restore vegetation on the Loess Plateau have made progress in improving the ecological and social conditions, but they have also resulted in some undesired consequences for natural resources. For a sustainable regional development, we need an improved approach to harmonise the conflicts between environmental protection and human...

Siloed and sectored management practices have contributed to the minimisation of soil erosion in dryland China thanks to soil conservation efforts for decades, but they have also led to other environmental problems such as water shortage. This further aggravates conflicts and competition between water users, for instance, between upstream and downs...

This book comprehensively describes the major ecosystem services in dryland environments that are provided by typical land use, including forestland, grassland and farmland, using the Loess Plateau, Northwest China as an example. It offers extensive information on land policy, implementation and scientific evidence, and discusses the restoration of...

Despite of all efforts, soil and land degradation is increasing across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). One reason for this is that many homes in SSA have no access to modern energy supply. Most of the energy used for cooking and heating comes from firewood, charcoal, crop residues, or even dung. Since biomass collection for energy use is not counterbalan...

There is no free lunch: Böden arm, Wasser knapp, alles Müll? Die drei Umweltresourcen Boden, Wasser und Abfall im Nexus betrachtet und wie sehr unsere Ernährung von ihnen abhängt.

North-west China accounts for 32% of the Chinese territory. In this region, two vital environmental resources are being acutely deteriorated. Because people here have practiced intensive farming for many centuries and vegetation cover is low due to deforestation and dramatic climate shifts, the soil has been seriously eroded and degraded, which is...

Vegetation restoration efforts (planting trees and grass) have been effective in controlling soil erosion on the Loess Plateau (NW China). Shifts in land cover result in modifications of soil properties. Yet, whether the hydraulic properties have also been improved by vegetation restoration is still not clear. The objective of this paper was to und...

The Loess Plateau of NW China is one of the most degraded environments worldwide with an annual soil loss rate of ∼20,000 t/km 2. To improve the situation, a national policy against erosion has been implemented in this region since 1950s. This policy includes biological (tree and grass plantation) and engineering (terrace and check-dam construction...

Large-scale vegetation restoration and climate change have triggered significant declines in runoff in the middle reaches of the Yellow River and its tributaries. This decline has increased water shortages and intensified water use conflicts that are threatening sustainable development in the Loess Plateau. Innovative strategies for more water-effi...

As an integrated result of many driving factors, significant declines in streamflow were observed in many rivers of the Loess Plateau (NW China). This can aggravate the inherent severe water shortages and threatens the regional development. Therefore, it is urgent to develop adaptive measures to regulate the water yield to ensure water security. A...