Publications

Charlotte Stijnen, Katinka Wijsman, Timon McPhearson, Niki Frantzeskaki. 2026. Uncovering streams, dreams, and dilemmas: A case study analyzing trade-offs and justice in the urban stream daylighting of Tibbetts Brook in New York City, USA. Environmental Development. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2025.101391

Daylighting urban waterways is one form of nature-based solution (NBS) gaining attention amongst cities internationally. Urban daylighting – which involves removing historically buried waterways from underground pipes and bringing them back to the surface – is an intensive form of NBS which can address urban stormwater management, reduce combined-sewage overflow issues, improve riparian habitat, and increase biodiversity. The ...

Grzegorz Budzik, Marta Sylla, Catharina J.E. Schulp. 2026. Cooling benefits of Urban agriculture to inhabitants—mapping cooling potential of allotments in European functional urban areas. Journal of Environmental Management. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.128275

As climate change accelerates and open urban spaces diminish, multifunctional urban planning solutions that enhance multiple ecosystem services (ES) are essential. Urban agriculture, particularly allotment gardens, plays a key role in addressing these challenges. This study assesses the cooling potential of all allotments across European Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) in terms of area cooled, maximum cooling distance and intens...

Jan J. Kuiper, Eerika Albrecht, Romina Martin, Heather Louise Moorhouse, Danielle Spence. 2026. Co-developing desired visions for lake futures: A PLURALAKES facilitation guide. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.18455489

PLURALAKES is an international Water4All project that is co-creating actionable pathways for safeguarding lake ecosystems and the communities that depend on them. PLURALAKES developing and testing a novel approach to co-developing desired visions for lake futures, as well as pathways to achieving these visions. This approach includes co-developing visions of desired futures with local actors in each case study, then co-develop...

Elizabeth Drury O’Neill, Maria Mancilla Garcia, Christopher Cheupe. 2026. A story with the Kenyan Digo of coastal social-ecological changes using an assemblage lens. Local Environment. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2026.2615012

This paper explores the social-ecological changes experienced by the Digo community of coastal Kenya, using an assemblage lens to present a composite narrative that captures the community’s complex interactions with modernisation, environmental change, and cultural adaptation. This relational research approach conceptualises social, ecological, and material elements as dynamically connected and continuously reconfigured wholes...

Taís Sonetti‐González, Ana Paula Dutra de Aguiar, Fernanda de Henn, Luciana F. C. Ferreira da Silva, Dentina Cruz da Silva, María Mancilla García, Mairon G. Bastos Lima. 2026. Communal sustainable development goals, belonging and involvement: Engaging with the SDGs. People and Nature. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.70225

1. This study examines sustainable development from the cosmovisions of Indigenous Peoples and other Traditional Communities (IoTCs) in western Bahia, a region in the Brazilian savanna of the Cerrado. It adopts a feminist decolonial and post-development approach to address issues of epistemic violence. 2. Employing participatory arts-based research, this study incorporates poetic and thematic co-analysis using participant-voi...

Mateja Nenadović, Alfredo Giron, Timothy Frawley, Adrian Munguia‐Vega, Kara E. Pellowe, Erica Ferrer, David Gill, Blanca González‐Mon, Andrew F. Johnson, Emilie Lindkvist, Fiorenza Micheli, Amy H. Weaver, Octavio Aburto, Ana Laura Flores‐Morales, Fiona Gladstone, Elizabeth Mansfield, Guido Marinone, Alejandro Parés‐Sierra, Anastasia Quintana, Jessica Reilly Moman, Salvador Rodriguez Van Dyck, Maja Schlueter, Jorge Torre, Björn Vollan, Heather M. Leslie, Xavier Basurto. 2026. Governance Arrangements That Fit Social‐Ecological Context Are Associated With Fishery Sustainability. Fish and Fisheries. https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.70060

In many parts of the world, natural resources are primarily managed by governance arrangements at the local level. Those arrangements range from collective, such as cooperatives and associations, to individualistic, such as patrons and owner-operators. A key question is how such arrangements influence resource use and associated social and ecological outcomes. We hypothesize that sustainable resource use is not associated with...

Bomei Zhang, Hongkai Gao, Lan Wang‐Erlandsson, Yan Li. 2026. Origins of Precipitation in the World's Water Towers. Geophysical Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL118244

High-mountain systems act as the planet's vital water towers, sustaining freshwater supplies for billions of people. Climate change is exacerbating hydrological imbalances in these regions, yet the moisture sources maintaining their precipitation—the primary water input—remain poorly quantified. Here, we combine two atmospheric moisture tracking methods to analyze 73 water tower units (WTUs), revealing that terrestrial evapora...

Hannah Prawitz, Luana Schwarz, Jonathan F Donges. 2026. Modeling social norms in social-ecological systems: a systematic literature review. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae3b55

Social norms play a pivotal role in sustainability transitions by shaping human behavior and influencing responses to challenges such as climate change and natural resource management. They can facilitate or impede collective action. Although simulation models help to explore norm dynamics, modeling approaches remain scattered and lack synthesis specific to social-ecological systems. This systematic review aims to map existing...

Ricarda Winkelmann, Julius Garbe, Jonathan F. Donges, Torsten Albrecht. 2026. Mapping tipping risks from Antarctic ice basins under global warming. Nature Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02554-0

The Antarctic Ice Sheet is subject to amplifying feedbacks which can accelerate ice loss and lead to effectively irreversible retreat. We here analyse the distinct nature and risk of long-term ice loss for each individual drainage basin under different levels of warming. Depending on topographic and climatic conditions, we find that ice loss in some basins unfolds gradually with warming, whereas other basins are characterized ...

John M. Anderies, Max Bechthold, Jonathan F. Donges, Ingo Fetzer, Nico Wunderling, Wolfram Barfuss, Johan Rockström. 2026. An Information-Based World-Earth System Resilience Index. EGUsphere. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-6345

In order to address the emerging global polycrisis, it is essential to develop quantitative indicators for estimating resilience of essential bio-geophysical and social drivers of change. Such indicators are required to navigate the Anthropocene and to assess which actions increase the likelihood of achieving a safe and just operating space (SAJOS). In this paper, we propose a novel information-based resilience metric. We defi...