Publications

Alta de Vos, Allyson Quinlan, Reinette Biggs, Elena Bennett, Berta Martín-López, Albert Norström, Garry Peterson, Michael Schoon, Craig Allen, Erik Andersson, Julia Baird, Marta Berbés-Blázquez, Fikret Berkes, Rafael Calderon-Contreras, Stephen Carpenter, Antonio Castro, Graeme Cumming, Marianne Falardeau, W. Liebrecht Fick, Carl Folke, Elson Ian Nyl Galang, Stefan Gelcich, Line Gordon, Nancy Grimm, Jacqueline Hamilton, Jennifer Hodbod, Chinwe Ifejika Speranza, Larissa Koch, Aleksandra Kosanic, Rafael Lembi, Bruno Locatelli, Katja Malmborg, Amanda Manyani, Morgan Mathisonslee, Anahi Ocampo-Melgar, Kinga Psiuk, Cibele Queiroz, Maraja Riechers, Lisen Schultz, Odirilwe Selomane, Kate Sherren, Marja Spierenburg, Micaela Trimble, Francis Turkelboom, Caroline Wallington. 2025. Welcome home! Introducing SocSES: a society for inclusive and impactful social-ecological research. Ecology and Society. https://doi.org/10.5751/es-16164-300232

Underpinned by systemic thinking, social-ecological systems (SES) research has emerged as a critical field for addressing the challenges of the Anthropocene, marked by a cross-scale focus, inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, and a strong emphasis on place-based work. Thanks to the efforts of many networks and institutes, the field has advanced new theoretical and methodological approaches, fostered dedicated journals, and...

Matti Kummu, Xander Huggins, Daniel Chrisendo, Venla Niva, Veera Saarenheimo, Vilma Sandström, Sina Masoumzadeh Sayyar. 2025. Unveiling global humanscapes: harmonised subnational socio-economic datasets for understanding societal changes and enhancing risk assessments. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-21201

One of the bottlenecks in global risk assessment studies is the lack of global sub-national socio-economic datasets spanning the past decades. To bridge this gap, we have compiled 12 global sub-national socio-economic datasets covering cultural diversity, economic conditions, demographics, equity, governance, health, and social well-being. These datasets form a harmonised global socio-economic data cube with annual data for 19...

Pablo Herreros-Cantis, Svetlana Khromova, Marta Olazabal, Timon McPhearson, Johannes Langemeyer, Marc B. Neumann. 2025. Knowledge diversity for climate change adaptation: A social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) approach to mental models. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105550

As climate-driven extreme weather events continue to intensify, risk mitigation and governance are a critical aspect of urban climate change adaptation. Interdisciplinary knowledge integration is critical in order to account for varied perspectives related to the impacts of extreme weather events on urban systems. Despite advances made to integrate different strands of knowledge through systems-based approaches, few methods ex...

Rachel Mazac, Minna Kaljonen, Kaisa Kurki, Niko Räty, Sanja Tuovila, Iryna Herzon. 2025. Planetary plate puzzle. International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts. https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2025.2501067

The debate around dietary change, particularly the importance of culturally acceptable changes, has become highly polarised, hindering societal transitions towards sustainability. Serious games have been used as effective deliberation tools fostering safe spaces for co-creation and respectful participation. We designed a serious game, the Planetary Plate Puzzle, aimed at investigating ecologically and culturally sufficient die...

Katja Malmborg, Jacqueline Hamilton, Carolin Seiferth. 2025. Leveraging place-based identities and senses of belonging to mobilize for action-oriented research in UNESCO sites. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2025.101536

With increasing land-use pressures on landscapes, it is critical to improve their governance while being inclusive of those living there. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites and Biosphere Reserves play a crucial role in protecting both social and ecological values in designated landscapes, making them interesting sites for action-oriented research. The designation and ...

Ana Paula Dutra Aguiar, David Collste, Sofia Cortés-Calderón, Taís Sonetti-González, Minella Alves-Martins, Antonio J. Castro, Amadou Diallo, Karl Martin Eriksson, Deborah Goffner, Zuzana V. Harmáčková, Amanda Jiménez-Aceituno, María D. López-Rodríguez, María Mancilla-García, Veronica Olofsson, Aldrin Martin Pérez Marin, Francisco Gilney Silva-Bezerra, Hanna Sinare, Claire Stragier. 2025. Unraveling deep roots in drylands: a systems thinking participatory approach to SDGs. Global Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2025.6

Achieving sustainability on the ground poses a challenge in decoding globally defined goals, such as sustainable development goals, and aligning them with local perspectives and realities. This decoding necessitates the understanding of the multifaceted dimensions of the sustainability challenges in a given context, including their underlying causes. In case studies from Brazilian drylands, we illustrate how an enhanced multis...

Paula Andrea Sánchez-García, Barbara Schröter, Torsten Krause, Andrew Sean Merrie, Laura Pereira, Jonas Østergaard Nielsen, Lasse Loft. 2025. A decolonial and participatory research approach to envision equitable transformations toward sustainability in the Amazon. Futures. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2025.103638

How people relate to and see themselves as part of nature relations differs worldwide and often depends on culture and worldviews. Nonetheless, challenging the dominant Euro-Western epistemic domination is needed to attain more equitable and sustainable future visions. This change entails fostering decolonial mediation between different knowledge systems in a context of intersectional difference. The collective struggles of Bl...

Gianelli, I., Trimble, M., Juri, S., Pereira, L.M., González-Mon, B., Villasante, S.. 2025. The seeds’ substrate: a concept to understand how transformations toward Good Anthropocenes can be enabled. Ecology and Society. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-15792-300138

The importance of connectedness in laying the ground for social-ecological transformations or in spreading new ideas and practices for transformation is increasingly recognized. However, the role of networks in supporting the emergence and growth of seeds (initiatives with the potential to positively shape the future) has not yet been comprehensively studied empirically. To this end, we introduce a novel concept, the seeds’ su...

Erik Zhivkoplias, Jessica M. da Silva, Robert Blasiak. 2025. How transdisciplinarity can help biotech-driven biodiversity research. Trends in Biotechnology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2025.04.008

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework marks a significant step toward conserving genetic diversity on a global scale. Sequencing advancements have broadened biodiversity studies by enabling the mapping of species distributions, increasing understanding of ecological interactions, and monitoring genetic diversity. However, these tools are hindered by inequalities and biases, particularly in biodiversity-rich develo...

María Mancilla García, Lena Bertemes Lalia, Marlino Mubai, Tilman Hertz, Elizabeth Maria Drury O’Neill, Caroline Abunge, Salomão Olinda Bandeira, François Bousquet, Christopher Cheupe, Dadivo José Combane, Tim Daw, Nyawira Muthiga, Halimu Shauri, Taís Sonetti González. 2025. A meaningful performative experience: using Forum Theatre as an ethical method in sustainability science. Sustainability Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-025-01699-3

Sustainability scientists have engaged in extensive discussions on ethical ways of doing research and argued on the importance of co-production approaches to counter knowledge extractivism. The specific issue of research fatigue, often associated with knowledge extractivism, and the possible methods to counter it, have however received less attention. This paper seeks to contribute to discussions on ethical ways of doing resea...