Dutch harbours became key notes in European foreign fat supply in the twentieth century. These imports of oils and fats have had significant economic, social and environmental impacts worldwide. Demand for these resources was driven by food industries, intensive livestock farming and fossil fuel mitigation, and linked domestic practices to global supply chains. This paper investigates the development of Dutch imports of oils and fats over the past century. It examines (1) the scale and geographical distribution of these resources, analysing growth, decline and spatial shifts in supply; and (2) the dependencies between the Netherlands and supplying regions. The study further explores the developments in technology, governance and knowledge that shaped these developments. The article thus highlights the bittersweet global consequences of Dutch reliance on imported oils and fats. This article was published open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

The palm oil industry, a significant economic driver in South-east Asia, remains at the centre of intense global scrutiny due to environmental and human rights concerns persist. Despite its high productivity per hectare, critics continue to raise concerns about its role in deforestation, biodiversity loss and exploitative labour practices. The industry’s transnational nature further complicates these debates, shaping public perception and policy discourse. Overwhelmingly, the narrative about this sector focuses on negative consequences, warning consumers of importing deforestation and supporting harmful labour practices. The media plays an outsized role in shaping and relaying such perceptions. However, civil society organisations (CSOs) also play an important role in shaping narratives as well as pushing for reforms in this industry. In this paper, we focus on the palm oil industry in the two largest producers globally, Indonesia and Malaysia. We trace how these narratives shift over time and highlight instances that acknowledge positive impacts and sustainability efforts. Ultimately, we argue for a more nuanced analysis of the palm oil agribusiness – one that accounts for diverse perspectives, recognises reform efforts and critically engages with the sector’s ongoing challenges. This article was published open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

During the colonial period, officials deemed the flowers of mahua ( Madhuca longifolia ) to be ‘low quality’ and ‘food for the poor’ and even attempted to restrict their use. Despite this, the highly nutritious mahua flower held a significant place in the day-to-day lives of the Adivasis in Chotanagpur, as food, medicine and an ingredient to produce local spirit. In the nineteenth century, the value of mahua came to the fore as a famine food for the Adivasis, as Chotanagpur was hit by a series of severe droughts. During these times of acute food scarcity, mahua flowers sustained many Adivasis, allowing them to survive for days and even months on this vital forest resource. Integral as mahua became to Adivasis diet, its later scarcity subsequently contributed to the famine of 1896–97. This paper, therefore, aims to highlight the significance of the mahua flower in relation to famine, examining how its use by the Adivasis both stabilised and threatened their food security.

Despite the central role of olive production in the Mediterranean economy, economic studies assessing the impact of climate variability on olive yield remain limited in scope and number. This study fills this gap by employing a novel data set comprising climate variables at the province level in Türkiye. Panel data analysis is employed to observe the effects of climate variability on olive yield in Adana, Antalya, Aydın, Balıkesir, Bursa, Çanakkale, Gaziantep, Hatay, Mersin, İzmir, Manisa and Muğla provinces during the period 1968–2018. The results derived from seven model specifications indicate that olive yield is significantly affected by temperature variability, number of frost days and decline in rainfall levels. Furthermore, consistent with existing literature, our findings highlight the critical role of the timing of climate-related changes in determining olive yield. This article was published open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/ .

Over the course of the twentieth-century, the primary path toward the ‘good life’ in the United States involved the purchase of a single family home in the suburbs, which promised financial security, social independence and access to a healthy environmental and verdant greenspace. But the system that developed was also built on racial exclusion and unsustainable and environmentally destructive levels of resource consumption. An examination of the spaces of the single-family home shows the challenges in creating a just and sustainable good life, as the social meaning and material realities of the system become intimately tied together. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .

The 1981 publication of David Weir and Mark Shapiro’s exposé Circle of Poison almost ten years after the banning of DDT represented how the landscape of understandings about hazardous chemicals and their regulation had changed. The book exposed two things. One was the ways power had reconfigured itself, which in turn highlighted the ways the story Silent Spring told, which effectively moved hearts and minds to make change happen. One thing that remained hidden, however, to both Rachel Carson and Weir and Shapiro, was the degree to which the chemical industry traded at the local and regional level, conducting international trade, emulating the poor and often bad faith practices of the transnational corporations. The failure of Circle ’s narrative, coupled with an overlooked and extensive network of mom-and-pop chemical companies, failed to build on Silent Spring ’s legacy. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

This paper focuses on two paradigmatic court decisions on pesticide spraying in Argentina's agricultural zone and offers a socio-legal approach based primarily on legal sources. The first case was brought by a small town in the province of Santa Fe where spraying in the surrounding fields was stopped, and has paved the way for a growing number of similar cases in the last decade. The second case, involved a much larger area, namely the entire territory of the province of Entre Ríos, where more than a thousand rural schools are affected by the use of pesticides. The article proceeds in two sections which analyses each of the cases and identifies the legal innovations involved as well as the challenges that remain. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

Abstract At Western Australia's Swan-Canning Estuary, extensive subfossil shellfish assemblages of Middle Holocene origin were largely destroyed through dredging for cement production in the first half of the twentieth century. This case-study of an extractive industry driving shellfish ecosystem decline builds on existing historical studies of commercial over-harvesting of oysters, and historical and paleo-ecological investigations of sustainable, long-term indigenous oyster harvests, presenting an important new perspective on global shellfish ecosystem decline and the enduring cultural value of shellfish resources by revealing processes of cross-cultural knowledge transfer, unfolding environmental understanding and extensive environmental change across Western Australia's post-European settlement history. We explore these histories in detail for the first time, before considering their relevance to a shellfish ecosystem reconstruction initiative currently underway at this major Australian urban estuary.