Reactive nitrogen has both positive and negative effects on environment and human health. The use of nitrogen fertilization enabled raising crops and livestock to feed an increasing world population, but at the same time resulted in a succession of unwanted impacts occurring through air, soil, and water, with detrimental consequences for all mankind. Nitrogen pollution is one of Latin America's most widespread and challenging environmental problems and is caused due to excess of nitrogen emissions from productive activities, especially agriculture, to attend a growing demand for food and energy. Here, we develop a conceptual framework of nitrogen emissions in Latin America to better understand the complexity of nitrogen dynamics in the region, the diverse drivers, and potential harms to environment and human health, as well as to support the formulation of adequate mechanisms to deal with the adverse impacts while increasing the benefits. Thus, our objective was to generate a functional tool not just for nitrogen scientists, but also for decision and policy makers. Using Brazil as an example, our main finding was that the increase in N emissions is due to demand drivers (demand for food, energy, and housing, connected with socioeconomic factors), while preparing and implementing a successful response to solve the N pollution problem depends entirely on the structural drivers (political and institutional factors, as governance issues). We highlighted the crucial role of political decision and institutional forcefulness in designing and implementing suitable policy instruments to handle the duality of nitrogen use. This finding prompts us to rethink about the (often non-existent) policy responses and the challenge for Latin American countries to deal with the nitrogen dilemma, “too much or too little of a very important nutrient”.

活性氮对环境和人类健康都有正面和负面影响。氮肥的使用使农作物和牲畜能够养活不断增长的世界人口，但同时又导致了通过空气，土壤和水产生的一系列有害影响，对全人类造成了不利影响。氮污染是拉丁美洲最普遍和最具挑战性的环境问题之一，其原因是生产活动（尤其是农业活动）对氮和磷的需求不断增长，导致氮排放量过多。在这里，我们建立了拉丁美洲氮排放的概念框架，以更好地了解该地区氮动态的复杂性，多种驱动因素以及对环境和人类健康的潜在危害，并支持制定适当的机制来应对不利影响，同时增加收益。因此，我们的目标是不仅为氮科学家，而且为决策者和决策者提供一种实用的工具。以巴西为例，我们的主要发现是氮的排放量增加是由于需求驱动因素（与社会经济因素有关的食物，能源和住房需求），同时准备并实施了成功的对策以解决氮污染问题完全取决于结构驱动力（政治和体制因素，如治理问题）。我们强调了政治决策和机构强制性在设计和实施适当的政策工具以处理氮素使用双重性方面的关键作用。