Publications

Lenka Suchá, Lenka Dušková, Julia Leventon, Prof. Dr., Aneta Seidlová, Štěpán Bubák, Zuzana V. Harmáčková. 2024. Knowledge based interventions for sustainable development cooperation: insights from knowledge systems mapping in Zambia. OSF. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/r5qc3

Knowledge is an essential determinant and component of international development cooperation agenda and projects. Therefore, it is vital to understand and reflect on how knowledge in international development cooperation is created, what knowledge counts, and how it influences the planning, implementation, and outcomes of international development cooperation projects. In this paper, we critically examine the knowledge system ...

Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Patrick Keys, Arie Staal, Jolanda Theeuwen, Nico Wunderling, Stefan Dekker, Agnes Pranindita, Adriaan J. Teuling, Maganizo Kruger Nyasulu, Ingo Fetzer, Rafaela Flach, Michael J. Lathuillière, Simon Fahrländer, Fernando Jaramillo, Line Gordon, Chandrakant Singh, Ruud van der Ent, Jose Andres Posada, Michele-Lee Moore, Mingzhu Cao. 2024. Time to recognize the ecosystem service of vegetation-supplied precipitation in management and governance. EGUsphere. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-19880

Globally, 60% of the evaporation from land returns as precipitation over land and a fifth of annual precipitation over land is directly dependent on the presence of vegetation-supplied moisture. In many regions, particularly in dry seasons, a majority of the precipitation relies on moisture from vegetation and is therefore vulnerable to changes in upwind land use that modify water moisture supply to the atmosphere. The benefit...

Arie Staal, Pim Meijer, Maganizo Kruger Nyasulu, Obbe Tuinenburg, Stefan Dekker. 2024. Global terrestrial moisture recycling in Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-8049

The global water cycle has undergone considerable changes since pre-industrial times due to global climate change and land-use changes. These drivers will almost certainly continue to change during the course of this century. However, where, how, and to which extent terrestrial moisture recycling will change as a result remains unclear. Mutually consistent scenarios of climate change and land-use changes for the 21 st centur...

Maganizo Kruger Nyasulu, Ingo Fetzer, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Fabian Stenzel, Dieter Gerten, Johan Rockström, Malin Falkenmark. 2024. African rainforest moisture contribution to continental agricultural water consumption. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109867

Precipitation is essential for food production in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 80 % of agriculture is rainfed. Although ∼40 % of precipitation in certain regions is recycled moisture from Africa's tropical rainforest, there needs to be more knowledge about how this moisture supports the continent's agriculture. In this study, we quantify all moisture sources for agrarian precipitation (African agricultural precipitatio...

Blanca González-Mon, María Mancilla-García, Örjan Bodin, Willem Malherbe, Nadia Sitas, Catherine B. Pringle, Reinette (Oonsie) Biggs, Maja Schlüter. 2024. The importance of cross-scale social relationships for dealing with social-ecological change in agricultural supply chains. Journal of Rural Studies. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2023.103191

Agricultural systems are important for the livelihoods and food security of millions of people. These systems are increasingly interconnected across scales and face challenges in responding to multiple, and coalescing types of environmental, social, and economic change. Most studies on how actors respond to change have focused on farmers and farming communities. In this study, we investigate the connectivity of farming systems...

Tilman Hertz, Thomas Banitz, Rodrigo Martínez-Peña, Sonja Radosavljevic, Emilie Lindkvist, Lars-Göran Johansson, Petri Ylikoski, Maja Schlüter. 2024. Eliciting the plurality of causal reasoning in social-ecological systems research. Ecology and Society. https://doi.org/10.5751/es-14806-290114

Understanding causation in social-ecological systems (SES) is indispensable for promoting sustainable outcomes. However, the study of such causal relations is challenging because they are often complex and intertwined, and their analysis involves diverse disciplines. Although there is agreement that no single research approach (RA) can comprehensively explain SES phenomena, there is a lack of ability to deal with this diversit...

Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Raf Jansen, Daniel Avila Ortega, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Jonathan F. Donges, Henrik Österblom, Per Olsson, Magnus Nyström, Steve Lade, Thomas Hahn, Carl Folke, Garry Peterson, Anne-Sophie Crepin. 2024. Evolution of the polycrisis: Anthropocene traps that challenge global sustainability. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-21005

The Anthropocene is characterized by accelerating change and global challenges of increasing complexity and most recently by what some have called a polycrisis. Based on an adaptation of the evolutionary traps concept to a global human context, we explore whether the human trajectory of increasing complexity and influence on the Earth system could become a form of Anthropocene trap for humanity. We identify 14 Anthropocene tra...

Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Vanessa P. Weinberger, Timothy M. Waring. 2024. Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0251

How did human societies evolve to become a major force of global change? What dynamics can lead societies on a trajectory of global sustainability? The astonishing growth in human population, economic activity and environmental impact has brought these questions to the fore. This theme issue pulls together a variety of traditions that seek to address these questions using different theories and methods. In this Introduction, w...

Thomas E. Currie, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Laurel Fogarty, Maja Schlüter, Carl Folke, L. Jamila Haider, Guido Caniglia, Alessandro Tavoni, Raf E. V. Jansen, Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Timothy M. Waring. 2024. Integrating evolutionary theory and social–ecological systems research to address the sustainability challenges of the Anthropocene. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0262

The rapid, human-induced changes in the Earth system during the Anthropocene present humanity with critical sustainability challenges. Social–ecological systems (SES) research provides multiple approaches for understanding the complex interactions between humans, social systems, and environments and how we might direct them towards healthier and more resilient futures. However, general theories of SES change have yet to be ful...

Tong Wu, Juan C. Rocha, Kevin Berry, Tomas Chaigneau, Maike Hamann, Emilie Lindkvist, Jiangxiao Qiu, Caroline Schill, Alon Shepon, Anne-Sophie Crépin, Carl Folke. 2024. Triple Bottom Line or Trilemma? Global Tradeoffs Between Prosperity, Inequality, and the Environment. World Development. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106595

A key aim of sustainable development is the joint achievement of prosperity, equality, and environmental integrity: in other words, material living standards that are high, broadly-distributed, and low-impact. This has often been called the “triple bottom line”. But instead, what if there is a “trilemma” that inhibits the simultaneous achievement of these three goals? We analysed international patterns and trends in the relati...