Publications

Marion Jay, Gonzalo Cortés‐Capano, Romina Martin, Julian Suntken, Tobias Plieninger. 2026. Exploring narratives of human–nature connections in protected areas. People and Nature. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.70195

1. Protected areas have become the most widespread strategy for nature conservation, and are currently expanding worldwide. Many of them are inhabited or close to inhabited areas, shaping and being shaped by connections between people and nature. These connections are not always positive. Social fragmentation, in the form of conflicts and disconnections from nature, represents a major challenge for biodiversity conservation in...

Thomas Elmqvist, Pippin Anderson, Erik Andersson, Vanesa Castan Broto, Tao Liu, Timon McPhearson, Anjal Prakash, Christopher Raymond, Patricia Romero-Lankao, Suneetha M. Subramanian, Xiaoling Zhang. 2026. Urban sustainability science: from adaptation to regeneration on the road to 2050. npj Urban Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-026-00362-9

When npj Urban Sustainability was launched in 2021, we framed urbanization as one of the defining processes of the Anthropocene—a process that drives global change, but which also opens opportunities for sustainability action 1 . Now, alongside the 5th anniversary of the journal, we reflect on the state of urban sustainability research and the knowledge gaps that we would like our community to address to support local and...

Simon West, Oliver Lilford, Vanessa Masterson, Emmeline Laszlo Ambjörnsson, Beau Austin, Bram Büscher, Laura Bethia Campbell, Marnie Graham, Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, Lisen Schultz, Marja Spierenburg, Grace Wong, Carina Wyborn. 2026. Masculinities in Conservation Science, Policy and Practice. Conservation Letters. https://doi.org/10.1111/con4.70007

Gender equality is a key target for conservation but is often treated as a women's issue with limited attention to the roles of men and masculinities in perpetuating unequal gender relations. This paper provides a qualitative systematic review of academic literature on “masculinities”—actions, norms, and values associated with men—in the conservation sector and synthesizes the reported effects of masculinities on conservation ...

Erik Andersson, Martin Ávila, Nelly Mäekivi. 2026. Wilding Practices Through Design: Playful Encounters for Reframing Control in Multispecies Cohabitation. Diseña. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.7764/disena.28.Article.1

This article explores how design can reintroduce elements of wildness into urban environments through artifacts that foster multispecies interaction. Wildness is not defined as a return to nature, but as a relational and semiotic rupture of control. It is an opportunity for nonhuman agency to emerge within human-managed spaces. Drawing on theories of affordances, play, cultural heritage, and metacommunication, we investigate h...

Mairéad O’Donnell, Melissa Pineda-Pinto, Erik Andersson, Marcus Collier. 2026. From control to cohabitation: Social-ecological insights on urban wildness narratives. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2026.129279

Narratives surrounding urban green space management have experienced significant shifts in recent years. While the command-and-control approach to urban green space management was once a dominant narrative, alternative understandings have emerged over time. The emerging narrative on urban wilding presents a unique opportunity to expand on our current understandings and approaches to urban green space management. This research ...

Matthew Dennis, Jonathan Huck, Claire Holt, Ewan McHenry, Erik Andersson, Sonali Sharma, Dagmar Haase. 2026. In search of Schrödinger’s patch: a functional approach to habitat delineation. Landscape Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-025-02291-x

The effective delineation of habitat is crucial for understanding drivers of habitat loss and fragmentation, and their effects on biodiversity outcomes at local to global scales. The concept of the habitat patch is central to this process but presents both theoretical and methodological challenges related to the seemingly irreconcilable tendency of habitat to simultaneously exhibit characteristics of both gradation and aggrega...

Matthew Dennis, Jonathan Huck, Claire Holt, Ewan McHenry, Erik Andersson, Sonali Sharma, Dagmar Haase. 2026. Beyond the patch: leveraging functional habitat delineation in fragmentation-biodiversity research. Landscape Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-025-02290-y

Theoretical and methodological developments in the field of fragmentation-biodiversity research continue to rely on the central concept of the habitat patch where patch size and number are considered particularly relevant to spatially structured ecological communities. However, although great interest has been shown in the effects of habitat fragmentation, appropriate methods for the spatial delineation of habitat have not rec...

Tim M. Daw, Simon West, Andrea Downing, Naghmeh Nasiritousi, Marina Lindell, Thomas Hahn, Mikael Karlsson, Tord Snäll, Daniel Lindvall. 2026. What role for deliberative minipublics in sustainability transformations? An emerging topic for sustainability science. Sustainability Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-025-01789-2

Democracies struggle to translate sustainability science, and public concern into sufficiently transformative actions. Ongoing polarization, politicization and disinformation extenuate this challenge. Some scholars suggest that deliberative democratic innovations can help to bridge science, public understanding and will formation, and policy implementation in the face of vested interests. In light of these challenges, we intro...

William J. Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Johan Rockström, Katherine Richardson, Nico Wunderling, Jillian W. Gregg, Thomas Westerhold, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. 2026. The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory. One Earth. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2025.101565

Earth’s climate is now departing from the stable conditions that supported human civilization for millennia. Crossing critical temperature thresholds may trigger self-reinforcing feedbacks and tipping dynamics that amplify warming and destabilize distant Earth system components. Uncertain tipping thresholds make precaution essential, as crossing them could commit the planet to a hothouse trajectory with long-lasting and potent...

Joern Fischer, Steffen Farny, Manuel Pacheco-Romero, Carl Folke. 2026. Resilience and regeneration for a world in crisis. Ambio. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-025-02287-6

Both resilience and regeneration are relevant concepts in sustainability science. Resilience thinking has led to improved understanding of cross-scale cycles of growth and renewal, regime shifts, and planetary boundaries. Regeneration highlights the role of positive, place-based and partially self-perpetuating social-ecological dynamics and seeks to foster mutualistic relationships between human and more-than-human entities. T...