In South Asia, a region facing rapid economic growth, immense population pressure, and high climate vulnerability, the circular economy (CE) has become a critical imperative for sustainable development. This study provides a comparative overview of the CE landscape across eight South Asian countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The analysis reveals the CE transition is nascent region-wide, though India has advanced its policy landscape through a comprehensive suite of rules and missions and Pakistan is developing a national policy. The primary focus remains on waste management, evidenced by programs like Bhutan’s ‘Zero Waste by 2030’ vision, the Maldives’ Single-Use Plastic Phase-Out Plan, and Sri Lanka’s Clean Sri Lanka Programme. While Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is emerging for plastics and e-waste in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, a significant “policy-practice gap” persists, undermined by weak enforcement and governance fragmented across priority sectors like plastics, food systems, and textiles. Most major CE initiatives are catalyzed by international development partners, with regional programs playing a key role in funding innovation. Finally, while the informal sector is the backbone of material recovery, ensuring a just transition that improves working conditions and secures livelihoods remains a critical challenge. The absence of a cohesive regional framework limits collaboration. Scaling the circular economy in South Asia requires integrated national strategies, prioritizing a just transition for the informal sector, and establishing a regional platform for policy harmonization to create self-sustaining system through multi-sectoral involvement, including the business sector.

We run in-person continuing professional development (CPD) sessions for primary teachers from our London and Keyworth offices. If you’re a teacher following the National Curriculum in England or Wales and want to get to grips with rocks, fossils, mountains, volcanoes and other geology teaching in the primary curriculum, join us for a session of lessons and demos you can take straight into the classroom. There are Primary Science Teacher CPD sessions on Rocks, fossils and soils on Thursday 18th June and Wednesday 1st July 2026 The following sessions are available, please click on the links to reserve your place: Thursday 18 June – Natural History Museum, London Rocks, fossils and soils Wednesday 1 July – BGS Keyworth Rocks, fossils and soils Thursday 2nd July – BGS Keyworth Plate tectonics, volcanoes and earthquakes Relative topics public engagement

Abstract The rapid development of underground space in soft soil areas necessitates improved understanding of the deformation patterns and mechanisms associated with ultradeep excavations. This study investigated the spatiotemporal deformation patterns induced by a 34.9 m-deep subway station excavation in Tianjin, China, constructed using the top-down (TD) method. The difference in deformation patterns between excavations using the bottom-up (BU) method and those using the TD method is discussed through field measurements and numerical simulations. In TD excavation, the magnitude of diaphragm wall (DW) horizontal displacement is significantly smaller than that in BU excavation. Furthermore, the rate at which the depth of maximum horizontal displacement increases with excavation depth is slower than that observed in BU excavation. Under stratum heave effects, the DW exhibited an uplift of up to 20 mm, generating differential displacements exceeding 10 mm between the wall and column. Stratum heave further exacerbated the differential settlement of adjacent buildings, causing the far-side foundation to experience uplift while settlement persisted on the near side. After accounting for wall uplift, the ratio of the maximum ground surface settlement to maximum lateral wall displacement ranged from 0.4 to 2.0, consistent with previous studies. The progressive development of DW deformation in both horizontal and vertical directions was summarized. The growth curve of TD excavations exhibits a convex upward shape, whereas that of BU excavations exhibits a convex downward shape. These findings provide guidance for the stage-specific deformation control of comparable complex projects in soft soil areas and highlight the need to incorporate stratum heave effects into the deformation analysis and structural design of ultradeep excavation support systems. Funding This work was supported by the Tianjin Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scientists of China (Grant No. 241CQJC00170), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2025M773243), and the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of CPSF (Grant No. GZC20252133). Their support is gratefully acknowledged. Author information Authors and Affiliations School of Civil Engineering, Tianjin University, 92 Weijin Rd., Nankai District, Tianjin, 300072, China Xuesong Cheng, Wenkai Wang, Qinghan Li, Chenkai Li & Gang Zheng China Construction Sixth Engineering Bureau Corp., Ltd, 219 Bawei Rd., Hedong District, Tianjin, 300171, China Jianwei Jia & Zihao Wang China Water Resources Beifang Investigation, Design and Research Co. Ltd, 60 Dongting Rd., Hexi District, Tianjin, 300222, China Tong Wang Authors Xuesong Cheng View author publications Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar Wenkai Wang View author publications Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar Qinghan Li View author publications Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar Jianwei Jia View author publications Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar Zihao Wang View author publications Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar Chenkai Li View author publications Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar Tong Wang View author publications Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar Gang Zheng View author publications Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar Corresponding author Correspondence to Qinghan Li. Ethics declarations Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests. Additional information Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Rights and permissions Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Reprints and permissions About this article Cite this article Cheng, X., Wang, W., Li, Q. et al. Spatiotemporal deformation patterns induced by ultradeep excavation in soft soil areas. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-54642-6 Download citation Received: 14 February 2026 Accepted: 20 May 2026 Published: 06 June 2026 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-54642-6 Share this article Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:Get shareable link Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Copy shareable link to clipboard Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative Keywords Soft soil Ultradeep excavation Top-down method Stratum heave Deformation control Numerical simulation Subjects Engineering Natural hazards Solid Earth sciences

Respected and experienced mining leader Amanda Lacaze is the new chair of the Minerals Council of Australia following an MCA board meeting in Perth yesterday, replacing outgoing chair Andrew Michelmore AO. The board of the MCA sincerely thanks our outgoing chair Andrew Michelmore AO for his dedication, leadership and commitment to the MCA over the past three and a half years, as our former chair between 2013 and 2016 and chair of ICMM between 2016 and 2018. Andrew spent many decades working for Western Mining Corporation, Zinifex, OZ Minerals, MMG and EN+ in Russia. He is also the current chair of the largest US aluminum company Century. A Rhodes scholar and 1974 rowing world champion, Andrew has been a tour de force and champion of the mining industry. With almost unrivalled experience across global mining, Andrew has led a strong collective effort to secure and advance the industry’s interests. ‘Andrew has been a tower of strength at a tumultuous time through his unwavering commitment and dedicated leadership,’ MCA CEO Tania Constable said. The board said that an MCA chair with deep industry understanding will assist the MCA to advance the sector and meet the challenges of the future. ‘Mining is the bedrock of Australia’s national resilience and I am delighted that I will be able to continue to contribute to this important industry, even after I leave Lynas,’ Amanda said. ‘I am very proud to be leading the MCA as our industry steps up to provide the minerals the world needs for growth, energy and strategic strength. ‘I look forward to working with all our stakeholders as we continue to build a strong, productive industry,’ she added.

Flames and smoke rise from an oil storage facility struck during attacks on Iran on 7 March Alireza Sotakbar/ISNA/AP/Alamy Israeli airstrikes on oil facilities in Tehran on 7 March led to sulphur dioxide emissions equivalent to a small volcanic eruption, potentially exposing people as far away as China to acid rain and toxic air pollution. As part of the US and Israeli campaign against Iran, warplanes struck several oil depots and a refinery that night, sparking massive fires that lit up the sky and spewed smoke for days. Black rain containing soot and hydrocarbons fell on the Iranian capital, and residents reported eye and skin irritation and difficulty breathing. Now, data from a new generation of Chinese satellites has shown that the plume of sulphur dioxide released by these explosions and fires covered 300,000 square kilometres, passing over Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and China. Advertisement Read more Wind-assisted cargo ships could more than halve shipping emissions The brief attack prompted a days-long spike in emissions, injecting a total of 29,800 tonnes of sulphur dioxide, according to Zhenping Yin at Wuhan University in China and his colleagues. For comparison, Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano was emitting about 20,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide per day when its ash cloud shut down air travel in Europe in 2010. The concentrations of sulphur dioxide measured by the satellites reached levels that could impair lung function, irritate the eyes and throat, and exacerbate asthma or bronchitis, especially among children and older people, says Yin. Free newsletter Sign up to The Earth Edition Unmissable news about our planet, delivered straight to your inbox each month. Sign up to newsletter “Although the major emission event lasted only one to two days, the research notes that the potential impact on the regional atmosphere should not be neglected,” he says. Pollutants may have been rained out over water sources and agricultural land, potentially contaminating drinking water and food, he adds. Sulphur dioxide reacts with different compounds of hydrogen and oxygen in the air to form sulphuric acid, leading to smog and acid rain. During the Great Smog of 1952, sulphuric acid and other pollution from burning coal killed an estimated 12,000 people in London. The attack on Tehran released about 20 times more sulphur dioxide than some coal-fired power plants in high-income countries emit in a year, although a coal plant in a nation that doesn’t require scrubbers on smokestacks can emit far more of it. Read more There has been a sudden increase in the rate of sea level rise Besides sulphur dioxide, the burning oil facilities emitted soot and heavy metals. According to Lucy Carpenter at the University of York, UK, the massive quantity of sulphur dioxide emitted suggests the plume held harmful quantities of even more dangerous pollution. This might include nitrogen oxides and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, as well unburned hydrocarbons like benzene, all of which have been linked to cancer. “[Sulphur dioxide] would be emitted with a whole range of other things,” says Carpenter. “That amount in one single fire has huge implications for people’s health… over thousands of kilometres.” These fine particles can stay aloft for days, travelling with the wind. It was impressive that the study was able to trace the evolution of the plume over such a wide area, she says. The plume only lasted for about three days, which probably isn’t enough time to cause cancer. And the satellites measure sulphur-dioxide concentrations through the entire atmosphere, so the toxin concentration at ground level is unclear. But the pollution could potentially have triggered asthma attacks, strokes or even heart attacks in especially vulnerable people, according to Carpenter. Arctic fires are releasing carbon stored for thousands of years A study of soils around the Arctic and boreal forests has found that some wildfires are releasing carbon stored over millennia, meaning higher CO2 emissions than assumed The Fengyun 3 satellite constellation that the study drew upon provides atmospheric concentrations of sulphur dioxide and other major pollutants to the public within three hours, which could improve disaster response, says Yin. “Satellite data are useful for pollution assessment and early warning for downstream areas.” Journal reference Advances in Atmospheric Sciences DOI: 10.1007/s00376-026-6252-9 Topics: war/ oil/ Donald Trump/ air pollution