Asia-Pacific (APAC) has been the world’s most dynamic emerging area of economic development and trade in recent decades. Here, we reveal the significant and imbalanced environmental and socio-economic effects of the region’s growths during 1995–2015. Owing to the intra-regional trade of goods and services, APAC economies grew increasingly interdependent in each other’s water and energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) and PM_2.5 emissions, and labor and economic productivity, while the environmental and economic disparity widened within the region. Furthermore, our results highlight APAC’s significant role in globalization. By 2015, APAC was engaged in 50–71% of the virtual flows of water, energy, GHG, PM_2.5, labor, and value added embodied in international trade. While the region’s final demand and trade grew less resource- and emissions-intensive, predominantly led by China’s transformations, APAC still lags behind global averages after two decades. More joint efforts of APAC economies and attention to sustainable transformation are needed.

Many cities are confronted with both water scarcity and urban flooding as centralized water infrastructures becoming increasingly inadequate in a changing climate. Decentralized infrastructures like rainwater harvesting (RWH) can ease both issues. Yet, most studies find RWH offers limited infrastructure capacity at high cost. Previous assessments, however, fail to consider two critical advantages: multi-functionality and high adaptability. By improving the incorporation of these advantages in our analysis of 1.06 million buildings with distinct design and water demand characteristics and 20-year hourly precipitation records in New York City (NYC), we demonstrate, contrary to existing studies, that strategically designed, financed and implemented rooftop RWH systems in all or a subset of the buildings can meet large-scale infrastructure development needs for water supply and stormwater management. RWH implementation featuring public-private partnerships (PPP) in 43-96% of the buildings can serve 17-29% of the city's non-drinking water demands while reducing the public expenditure per unit of water supply by 13-85%. The distributed citywide RWH implementations prevent 35-56% of rooftop runoff from entering the sewage system, rivers, and/or waterways per month, with observed rooftop runoff reductions as high as 90% for a single rain event.

Health care substantially contributes to global greenhouse gas emissions, but for pharmaceuticals, this is mostly understood through case studies of individual medicines. Using newly compiled international databases, we aimed to analyse global greenhouse gas emissions from pharmaceutical consumption and production over time and across supply chains. We quantified the pharmaceutical greenhouse gas footprint across 77 regions from 1995 to 2019 using environmentally extended multi-regional input-output (EE-MRIO) analysis, then conducted structural decomposition analysis to assess key drivers. To identify producers' full supply chain emission responsibility and mitigation opportunities, we performed structural path analysis and assessed scope 1-3 emissions, supported by a Sankey diagram visualisation. Our analysis was based on data from the EE-MRIO database developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Inter-Country Input-Output tables 2023) and validated using the EE-MRIO database developed by Eurostat (FIGARO-2024). From 1995 to 2019, the global pharmaceutical greenhouse gas footprint grew by 77%. This increase was primarily driven by rising pharmaceutical final expenditure, especially in China, and efficiency gains stalling after 2008. High-income countries contributed, on average, a nine-times to ten-times higher pharmaceutical greenhouse gas footprint per capita than lower-middle-income countries in 1995-2019. Supply chain emissions varied substantially among major suppliers in intensity, overseas displacement, and upstream effects. Greenhouse gas emissions related to pharmaceuticals have risen substantially and are likely to continue to rise without concerted and coordinated action. Pharmacies and researchers should investigate sources of unnecessary pharmaceutical use and waste, the industry should improve supply chain efficiency, governments should promote pharmaceutical waste reduction programmes, and international organisations must support global mitigation efforts, especially given the growing importance of scope 3 emissions and international outsourcing. Leiden University.