The external walls are regarded as an important source for the thermal exchange between the outside and inside of a building. Despite the significance of building walls for energy savings, a large body of research has focused mainly on thermal comfort, environmental impacts, and economic costs of residential buildings. However, few researchers have addressed the thermal performance of common bu...

Compensation from the international community should be provided and take account of the opportunity costs of alternative uses of the land, the costs of administering and enforcing protection, and managing the transition. Research carried out for this report indicates that the opportunity cost of forest protection in 8 countries responsible for 70 per cent of emissions from land use could be ar...

Urban water systems are impacted by land use within their source watersheds, as it affects raw water quality and thus the costs of water treatment. However, global estimates of the effect of land cover change on urban water-treatment costs have been hampered by a lack of global information on urban source watersheds. Here, we use a unique map of the urban source watersheds for 309 large cities ...

Conservation initiatives to protect and restore valued species and communities in human-dominated landscapes face huge challenges linked to the cost of acquiring habitat. We ask how the sale of forest carbon offsets could reduce land acquisition costs, and how the alternate goals of maximizing α or β-diversity in focal communities could affect the prioritization land parcels over a range of con...