The paper discusses the necessity to bring environmental equity within the Pata Rât Roma community in Northwest Romania, relying on the answers to three questions: “Does environmental equity exist in Pata Rât?”, “How can it be attained?”, and “To what extent can it be brought to the targeted people?” It was shown how a trio of factors tailors the destiny of Roma inhabitants: being a minority, their ethnicity, and the fact they are living on and off what society rejects and dumps—a landfill. The framing of the environmental equity concerns within a vision considering negotiation as the most adequate means to attain it is a novel approach. Further on, the results of the study can fuel win-win solutions in environmental equity. The information abstracted from a set of indicators, assessed through an evaluation matrix, represents a beneficial platform for future bottom-up decisions concerning landfill residents. Three action options were analyzed: on-site living opportunities—that resulted to be preferred, off-site living opportunities, and “Do nothing”. The analysis provides qualitative evidence that the evaluation of environmental equity is largely subjective, because of its complexity and specificity related to geographical, historical, cultural characteristics, and political interests.

Peripheral, disaster and polluted rural areas (PDP rural areas) are generally perceived as a “Cinderella” of water public policy measures, deepening the rural-urban cleavage in terms of opportunities for a decent life. The main goal of the study is to develop public policy options regarding the supply of safe drinking water in Romanian PDP rural areas. The main instrument to achieve it is an ex-ante policy analysis of three solutions: a conventional technology, based on chlorine, a green technology using an advanced oxidation process with bio-filter (O3BioFilter), and “do nothing”. Environment protection, social equity, technical performance, economic efficiency and political feasibility were the criteria selected for analysis, within a focus-group. Several qualitative and quantitative methods were used: evaluation matrix, weighted cost-effectiveness and break-even point. The results of the first two indicate that the O3BioFilter has the best score, but not much higher than the conventional alternative (10% higher), revealing a possible path-dependency to familiar technologies. This analysis is not a ready-made solution valid in any case, nor a direct indication of “the best choice”, but a decision tool in the adoption and implementation of sustainable water public policies.

In this context, functional saturation is defined as the state in which a system’s capacity to sustain additional productive or regulatory functions becomes constrained due to cumulative anthropogenic pressures, even if some physical space remains available. This review examines whether the progressive contraction of terrestrial plant communities under intensifying anthropogenic pressure can be functionally compensated by the expansion of marine macroalgal systems in a high-CO ₂ world. Integrating perspectives from Earth system ecology, biogeochemistry, and spatial analysis, the study evaluates three interdependent dimensions: the saturation of habitable terrestrial space, the relative openness yet ecological constraint of marine environments, and the dynamic coupling between atmospheric CO ₂ and ocean chemistry. The synthesis reveals a fundamental asymmetry between land and ocean systems. Terrestrial ecosystems are undergoing direct structural transformation through land-use change, resulting in a measurable contraction of ecologically functional space and increasing transgression of planetary boundaries. In contrast, marine systems retain substantial geometric space but are subject to diffuse, cumulative stressors, particularly in productive coastal zones where macroalgal communities are most viable. Elevated CO ₂ exerts dual effects on marine primary producers, simultaneously enhancing photosynthetic potential while intensifying ocean acidification, with temporally lagged responses mediated by air–sea exchange dynamics. Although macroalgae may exhibit localized increases in productivity, their capacity to provide long-term carbon sequestration and ecosystem stability remains inherently limited due to rapid biomass turnover, susceptibility to regime shifts, and the interaction of multiple stressors. The available evidence suggests that marine macroalgal expansion is unlikely to fully compensate for terrestrial vegetation loss at global ecological and biogeochemical scales. Instead, the Earth system is undergoing a net reduction in biospheric resilience, characterized by declining terrestrial complexity and increasingly unstable marine productivity. These findings challenge assumptions of compensatory redistribution of primary production and underscore the necessity of preserving terrestrial ecosystems alongside mitigating pressures on marine environments.

Seed dispersal is a key life-history process shaping plant fitness, population dynamics, community assembly, and species distributions. Global environmental change can modify dispersal by altering environmental conditions, landscape connectivity, dispersal vectors, and the selective pressures acting on plant populations. This narrative review synthesizes evidence on the ecological and evolutionary responses of seed dispersal to climate change, habitat fragmentation, biological invasions, and defaunation. We develop an integrative causal framework linking environmental change to dispersal-related trait variation, selection, propagule movement, establishment, and population redistribution, with feedbacks arising as redistributed populations encounter new ecological and selective environments. The review considers anemochory, hydrochory, zoochory, autochory, and anthropochory, highlighting human-mediated transport as a major pathway of propagule movement across disturbed landscapes and geographical barriers. It also distinguishes herbaceous from woody plants, emphasizing how generation time, reproductive turnover, seed traits, and dependence on dispersal vectors can influence the pace and direction of ecological and evolutionary responses. Evidence on climate-driven range shifts indicates that dispersal can facilitate colonization and local persistence but rarely guarantees climate tracking, because realized redistribution also depends on landscape permeability, disperser functionality, climatic directionality, and recruitment conditions. Changes in plant - disperser networks can further modify dispersal effectiveness and selection on plant traits, potentially generating eco-evolutionary feedbacks. However, empirical evidence linking multiple global change drivers to evolutionary changes in dispersal and reciprocal plant - disperser responses remains limited. We conclude that predicting plant persistence and redistribution requires an integrated framework that connects environmental drivers, plant life history, dispersal vectors, trait evolution, landscape structure, and establishment processes.