Contributions of place-based social-ecological research to address global sustainability challenges

Abstract

[ ]achieving global sustainability targets such as the Global Agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or the future Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Post-2020 Agenda for biodiversity conservation requires better understanding of social-ecological interactions between regions and across spatial scales [ ]the IPBES Global Assessment reported that demand for material benefits, such as food or biofuels, is predominantly from higher- and middle-income countries, while its provision tends to originate from land-use systems in middle- and lower-income countries (Díaz et al , 2019) [ ]the extraction and exchange of material benefits are often negotiated between powerful social actors and institutions, often leading to unequal distributions of economic and environmental benefits and costs among actors and between regions (Díaz et al , 2019;Folke et al , 2019;Martín-López et al , 2019;Österblom et al , 2015) Improving current understanding of cross-scale social-ecological dynamics in order to better identify those dynamics that lead to unsustainable and unjust futures and the governance systems that promote sustainability and justice are – arguably – two of the most salient challenges for sustainability science today