February 2020: Current urban growth patterns show strong tendencies for outward and horizontal expansion outside East or Southeast Asia. These growth patterns are generally considered to be unsustainable. It highlights the need to incentivise vertical/upward urban growth to deliver low carbon, walkable, resource efficient, and resilient future cities.

February 2020: Progress towards realising the UN’s SDGs by 2030 is generally measured at the global level. However, recent evidence points towards sustainability being most effective and deliverable at the local level. The localisation of sustainability requires careful balancing between competing sectors to avoid achieving progress in one area and decreasing or reversing progress in another.

January 2020: Increasing evidence is pointing towards Earth reaching climate tipping points. These events could cause cascading domino effects with long-term changes to current ecosystems and human activity.

January 2020: Concentration of warming gases has reached a record high in 2018 and will continue to rise over the next years. The findings identify an increasing gap between ambitions set out in international accords such as the Paris Agreement and reality. The authors are calling for increased levels of ambition and acceleration for decarbonising the economy and limiting warming to 1.5C.