Publications

Zoie Diana, Kelly Reilly, Rachel Karasik, Tibor Vegh, Yifan Wang, Zoe Wong, Lauren Dunn, Robert Blasiak, Meagan M. Dunphy-Daly, Daniel Rittschof, Daniel Vermeer, Amy Pickle, John Virdin. 2022. Voluntary commitments made by the world’s largest companies focus on recycling and packaging over other actions to address the plastics crisis. One Earth. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2022.10.008

Plastic pollution has caused significant environmental and health challenges. Corporations that contribute to the manufacture, use, and distribution of plastics can play a vital role in addressing global plastic pollution and many are committing to voluntary pledges. However, the extent to which corporations’ voluntary commitments are helping solve the problem remains underexplored. Here, we develop a novel typology to charact...

Österblom, H., Blasiak, R.. 2022. Credibility at stake in Sweden. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adf4127

Swedens legacy as a global leader in the push to put climate and the environment at the heart of government decision-making may have come to an end on 18 October 2022. The first casualty of the countrys new right-wing government was the Ministry of the Environment, eliminated on Day 1. A key question is the extent to which this change derails progress made toward building a sustainable nation and world. Sweden has long been a...

Blasiak, R., Jouffray, J., Amon, D., Moberg, F., Claudet, J., Søgaard Jørgensen, P., Pranindita, A., Wabnitz, C., Österblom, H.. 2022. A forgotten element of the blue economy: marine biomimetics and inspiration from the deep sea. PNAS Nexus. doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac196

The morphology, physiology, and behavior of marine organisms have been a valuable source of inspiration for solving conceptual and design problems. Here, we introduce this rich and rapidly expanding field of marine biomimetics, and identify it as a poorly articulated and often overlooked element of the ocean economy associated with substantial monetary benefits. We showcase innovations across seven broad categories of marine b...

Österblom, H., Folke, C., Rocha, J. et al. Scientific mobilization of keystone actors for biosphere stewardship. Sci Rep 12, 3802 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-07023-8

The biosphere crisis requires changes to existing business practices. We ask how corporations can become sustainability leaders, when constrained by multiple barriers to collaboration for biosphere stewardship. We describe how scientists motivated, inspired and engaged with ten of the world’s largest seafood companies, in a collaborative process aimed to enable science-based and systemic transformations (2015–2021). CEOs face...

Blasiak, R.. 2021. My first pet. Nature. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02965-x

Blasiak, R.. 2021. Check your pockets. Nature. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01808-z

Blasiak, R.. 2021. Family first. Science. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.372.6545.1006

"For me, accepting that my career is secondary to my family made every other decision easier. And when I articulated that to my colleagues, they all understood and accepted my priorities. Sometimes academia is described as a hypercompetitive space in which people are pushed to the extremes to succeed. But the support and generosity of my colleagues and collaborators has taught me it can also be a kind space, and this is someth...

Sumaila, U., Skerritt, D., Schuhbauer, A., Villasante, S., Cisneros-Montemayor, A., Sinan, H., et.al. 2021. WTO must ban harmful fisheries subsidies. Science. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.abm1680

Sustainably managed wild fisheries support food and nutritional security, livelihoods, and cultures. Harmful fisheries subsidies—government payments that incentivize overcapacity and lead to overfishing—undermine these benefits yet are increasing globally. World Trade Organization (WTO) members have a unique opportunity at their ministerial meeting in November to reach an agreement that eliminates harmful subsidies. We—a group...

Blasiak, R., Leander, E., Jouffray, J., Virdin, J.. 2021. Corporations and plastic pollution: Trends in reporting. Sustainable Futures. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sftr.2021.100061

Research on pathways to reducing plastic pollution often concludes that greater action is needed by the private sector. Yet the private sector is not a monolithic or homogeneous entity. We compiled a novel library of 2,317 corporate reports from the world's 200 largest companies, by revenue, over a ten-year period (2010–2019) and used text mining tools to identify pronounced regional and sectoral variability in the extent to ...

Österblom, H., Blasiak, R.. 2021. Oil licences undermine Norway’s ocean leadership. Nature. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00445-w

As two of the 250 scientists who supported 14 heads of state in crafting the agreement for 100% sustainable ocean management by 2025 that was announced in December (see E. Solberg Nature 588, 9; 2020), we are deeply concerned. Just weeks later, Norway — co-leader of the initiative — announced 61 new licences for oil and gas exploration, and it plans to permit sea-bed mining as early as 2023. Such ‘business as usual’ is antithe...