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Many cities around the world are experimenting with nature-based solutions (NbS) to address the interconnected climate-, biodiversity- and society-related challenges they are facing (referred to as the climate–biodiversity–society, or CBS, nexus), by restoring, protecting and more sustainably managing urban ecosystems. Although the application of urban NbS is flourishing, there is little synthesized evidence clarifying the contribution of NbS in addressing the intertwined CBS challenges and their capacity to encourage transformational change in urban systems worldwide. We map and analyse NbS approaches specifically for climate change adaptation across 216 urban interventions and 130 cities worldwide. Results suggest that current NbS practices are limited in how they may comprehensively address CBS challenges, particularly by accounting for multidimensional forms of climate vulnerability, social justice, the potential for collaboration between public and private sectors and diverse cobenefits. Data suggest that knowledge and practice are biased towards the Global North, under-representing key CBS challenges in the Global South, particularly in terms of climate hazards and urban ecosystems involved. Our results also point out that further research and practice are required to leverage the transformative potential of urban NbS. We provide recommendations for each of these areas to advance the practice of NbS for transformative urban adaptation within the CBS nexus. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited. The project that gave rise to these results received the support of a fellowship from the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation (ID 100010434). The fellowship code is ‘LCF/BQ/DI20/11780006’ (S.G.). This research is further supported by María de Maeztu excellence accreditation 2018–2022 (ref. MDM-2017-0714), funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/; and by the Basque Government through the BERC 2022–2025 programme (S.G., M.O. and U.P.).

Summary “Nature's contributions to people” (NCP) is designed to provide space for the recognition of diverse and evolving culturally mediated ideas about what people derive from, and co-produce with, nature. Its origins, along with the IPBES conceptual framework in which it is embedded, is transdisciplinary, action-oriented, and inclusive and also embraces pluralism. NCP provides both generalizing and context-specific perspectives and analytical tools that can be interwoven and enables diverse actors to represent nature-people interactions for different scales, audiences, and decision-makers. NCP therefore can be used to understand and communicate the ways in which ongoing biodiversity decline may affect the complex relationships between people and nature. This Primer presents NCP in accessible language, highlights its unique contribution as a tool for plural valuation of nature in conservation assessments, clarifies common misconceptions, and provides examples of the innovative ways NCP has already been applied around the world.

In this article, we explore why conservation schemes that have positive outcomes through the participation of local communities cannot necessarily be deemed as just. We observe that recognition (understood as inclusion and respect) of local communities’ value‐systems, a key factor towards environmental justice, is not often achieved in conservation governance. We build our argument on the authors’ extensive research on four Mexican forest areas and contrast our insights with the literature on environmental justice and conservation. All four cases are characterised by positive conservation outcomes as well as the inclusion of local communities in conservation governance, and as such are typically considered best‐practice conservation initiatives in Mexico. Yet, in all cases, our engagement with local community members leads us to believe that their value‐systems fail to be recognised in conservation governance. Three main factors appear to hinder recognition: (a) the dominant knowledge‐system underpinning conservation action prevails in legal frameworks; (b) financial resources heavily determine power relations in decision‐making, and (c) a lack of sensitiveness to local cultural norms affects local stakeholders’ capacity to communicate with external actors that design and implement conservation action. We conclude that achieving meaningful recognition of local communities’ value‐systems requires: (a) developing awareness of the structural political and economic factors impacting on decision‐making in conservation, and (b) an epistemological transformation, permeating conservation governance, in which local communities’ value‐systems are considered one of various legitimate knowledge‐systems. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Transformation of social-ecological systems due to climate change requires, transformative adaptation responses. We propose the concept of nature s contribution to adaptation (NCA; previously called adaptation services), to reveal properties of ecosystems that provide options for future livelihoods and adaptation to transformative change. Knowledge about the capacity of ecosystems to supply NCA can inform decisions by revealing options for adaptation. We analysed eight historical and contemporary case studies of transformative adaptation and found that the five cases with medium-high degree of adaptation and use of NCA showed evidence of participative learning and co-production of adaptation options, low values contestation, low power imbalances and well-developed governance arrangements. These variables indicated that communities engaged in adaptation had ownership and agency to change how they thought and acted to implement transformative adaptation. We found the use of NCAs enabled transformative adaptation by helping people overcome current decision constraints imposed by societal values, institutional rules, or knowledge deficits to create novel options and re-frame decision contexts. The NCA concept can be applied to (1) help resolve uncertainties about nature s contributions to people under environmental change; (2) reveal ecosystem properties of value for adaptation, but which are marginalised in current, dominant knowledge frameworks and decision-making; (3) act as a boundary object for participative learning and co-production of adaptation options. Thus, the NCA concept represents a pragmatic, optimistic approach for societal adaptation to ecosystem transformation, countering feelings of despair that accompany the acceptance of irreversible, unavoidable loss of current ecosystem states and associated nature s contributions to people. © 2020, © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This research was funded in part by CSIRO Land and Water. SL acknowledges support from the CSIRO Visiting Scientist Program and the French Agence Nationale pour la Recherche for MntnPaths (ANR-16-CE93-0008-01) and Investissements d?Avenir CDP Trajectories (ANR-15-IDEX-02). UP and IP acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, under BC3 ?Unit of excellence? (MIMECO, MDM-2017- 0714). IP was also supported by grant IJCI-2016?28475. We thank Houria Djoudi and Bruno Locatelli for input to discussions on rankings of the Lake Faguibine and Central Java and Kalimantan case studies and Houria Djoudi for kindly supplying Figure 1b. This paper is a contribution from the Transformative Adaptation Research Alliance (TARA, https://research.csiro.au/tara/); an international network of researchers and practitioners dedicated to the development and implementation of novel approaches to transformative adaptation to global change.

Urban green and blue spaces (UGBS) are key for biodiversity conservation. Many studies focus on UGBS benefits for well-being, but how UGBS ecological and quality influence urban biodiversity is still poorly understood. We analysed the predictive accuracy of urban wildness (UW) and habitat quality (HQ) spatial patterns to biodiversity in the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country. Using GIS techniques, we mapped relative UW as a landscape quality, considering remoteness, challenging terrain, and perceived naturalness. We further evaluated HQ using the InVEST habitat quality module, including data on habitat sensitivity to threats (e.g. population density, light and noise pollution, accessibility) and suitability for biodiversity support, based on a parametrization by expert consultation. We compared UW and HQ to observed species richness obtained from crowd-sourced databases as a biodiversity proxy. UW and HQ models predicted general biodiversity urban patterns, being particularly adequate in UGBS. Peripheral UGBS were associated with higher UW and HQ and positively correlated to biodiversity, as opposed to the smaller-sized centrally located UGBS, more exposed to threats. Both predictors significantly explained biodiversity, and HQ better accounted for threat susceptibility in UGBS. Our findings suggest that small-sized UGBS, such as parks and squares, fail to effectively support urban biodiversity, due to their high exposure and vulnerability to threats, particularly in centric areas. Emphasizing efforts in larger centric UGBS with rewilding strategies (e.g. lowering management frequency) and reducing exposure to threats is essential to increase the habitat quality of UGBS and thus support urban biodiversity. © 2022 The Authors We are grateful to the Environmental Studies Centre (CEA) from the Vitoria-Gasteiz council, especially to Asier Sarasua and Aitor Albaina for their collaboration and assistance with data collection and for providing valuable information from the city and greenbelt. We are also grateful to all the experts who kindly participated in the survey design and filled out the questionnaire for model parametrization, along with providing interesting discussion points. We thank Juan Pablo Pacheco for his feedback on the manuscript. CA was supported by the Doctoral INPhINIT–INCOMING program, fellowship code (LCF/BQ/DI20/11780004), from “La Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434). JCS considers this work a contribution to his VILLUM Investigator project “Biodiversity Dynamics in a Changing World” funded by VILLUM FONDEN (grant 16549). This work was supported by the Basque Centre for Climate Change ‘‘Unit of Excellence’’ (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; MDM-2017-0714).

Altres ajuts: Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M Transformative governance is key to addressing the global environmental crisis. We explore how transformative governance of complex biodiversity-climate-society interactions can be achieved, drawing on the first joint report between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services to reflect on the current opportunities, barriers, and challenges for transformative governance. We identify principles for transformative governance under a biodiversity-climate-society nexus frame using four case studies: forest ecosystems, marine ecosystems, urban environments, and the Arctic. The principles are focused on creating conditions to build multifunctional interventions, integration, and innovation across scales; coalitions of support; equitable approaches; and positive social tipping dynamics. We posit that building on such transformative governance principles is not only possible but essential to effectively keep climate change within the desired 1.5 degrees Celsius global mean temperature increase, halt the ongoing accelerated decline of global biodiversity, and promote human well-being.

Sustaining the organisms, ecosystems, and processes that underpin human well-being is necessary to achieve sustainable development. Here we analyze 14 of nature’s contributions to people (NCP) for food, water, and climate security. Using spatial optimization, we identify critical natural assets, the most important ecosystems for providing NCP, comprising 30% (for local benefits) to 44% (for local and global benefits) of total global land area and 24% of national territorial waters. Many of these NCP are left out of international agreements focused on conserving species or mitigating climate change, yet our analysis shows that explicitly prioritizing critical natural assets jointly advances development, climate, and conservation goals. Crafting policy and investment strategies that protect critical natural assets is essential for sustaining human well-being and securing Earth’s life support systems.

With increasing attention on green(ing) cities, urban nature is used to increase liveability, to create new sectors such as tourism, and to boost international investment. What counts as desirable green intervention generally follows internationally accepted practices as cities aim for international recognition. Here, we examine the historic production of a green identity and the ways in which urban leaders have navigated local politics to enact greening. We focus on the mid-sized city Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country, Spain), the 2012 European Green Capital. Based on a critical discourse analysis of archival data and in-depth interviews, we explore the production of a green city-identity over a period of forty years and determine four key processes: (i) early good leadership with a social city being core objective of urban planning, (ii) the need for building shared goals in a context of a violent political conflict in the Basque Country, (iii) policy mobilities and thriving for becoming a green pioneer internationally, and (iv) de-politization of green and sustainability discourses. We argue that the initially perceived social green amenity - an outcome of early progressive urban democratic experimentation - that served as a unifying project across polarized political fractions turned into an economic cultural asset for economic growth, shifting from a political to a sustainability fix. © 2022 The Author(s) This work was supported by the Department of Education of the Basque Government ( PIBA19-0096 ), the City of Vitoria-Gasteiz (and the Centro de Estudios Ambientales ), and by María de Maeztu excellence accreditation 2018-2022 (Ref. MDM-2017-0714), funded by MCIN/AEI / 10.13039/501100011033 /. The authors thank the Centro de Estudios Ambientales Vitoria-Gasteiz for the time and effort of sharing documents and their knowledge about the study context. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments to improve the paper.

The future of nature's contributions A recent Global Assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has emphasized the urgent need to determine where and how nature's contribution matters most to people. Chaplin-Kramer et al. have developed a globalscale modeling of ecosystem services, focusing on water quality regulation, coastal protection, and crop pollination (see the Perspective by Balvanera). By 2050, up to 5 billion people may be at risk from diminishing ecosystem services, particularly in Africa and South Asia. Science , this issue p. 255 ; see also p. 184

Land is increasingly managed to serve multiple societal demands. Beyond food, fiber, habitation, and recreation, land is now being called on to meet demands for carbon sequestration, water purification, biodiversity conservation, and many others. Meeting these multiple demands requires negotiating trade-offs among the choices and differing values placed on them by diverse stakeholders and institutions. Here, we review recent advances in understanding the role of diverse values and trade-offs in managing landscapes to support multiple demands, from a land systems perspective. Recent work by the IPBES and others has recognized the need to accommodate a greater diversity of values into decision-making through the framework of ‘nature’s contributions to people (NCP)’ providing a perspective on human–nature relations that goes beyond a stock-flow, ecosystem services, decision-making framing. NCP offers real potential to enable land system science to better integrate the many diverse value systems of stakeholders and institutions into efforts to better understand and more fairly govern the increasingly wicked tradeoffs of land systems in the Anthropocene, especially under conditions of less well functioning institutions and governance.

Social and cultural contexts influence power dynamics and shape gender perceptions, roles, and decisions regarding the management of agrobiodiversity for dealing with and adapting to climate change. Based on a feminist political ecology framework and a mixed method approach, this research performs an empirical analysis of two case studies in the northern of India, one in the Himalayan Mountains and another in the Indian-Gangetic plains. It explores context-specific (i) influence of gender roles and responsibilities on on-farm agrobiodiversity management (ii) gendered expertise and knowledge related to agrobiodiversity and (iii) gendered preferences for practices and institutional arrangements for agrobiodiversity conservation linked to adaptation to climate change. In the Himalayan mountains women actively participate in crop and seed management decisions and tasks, and maintain informal institutions for seed and services exchanges in the case of crisis, which simultaneously favours high levels of agrobiodiversity and enhances women’s social status. By contrast, in the Indio-Gangetic plains, where women from better-off households are socially secluded and women from poorer households work mainly as labourer to respond to high out-migration of men, they exercise less public control over agrobiodiversity, with their role being mainly invisible at the homestead and related to post-production tasks. We finally discuss as improved understanding of the links between gendered spaces, crops, tasks, social status, and agrobiodiversity management can facilitate the design of gender-sensitive policy interventions for conservation and adaptation to climate change.

Agricultural landscapes are dynamic environments which change in response to cropping and trade opportunities, available technologies and climatic conditions. In this article, we investigate farmers vulnerability to climate-related stressors and crop price volatility in rural Navarre, Spain. Specifically, we analyse the extent to which livelihood differences and vulnerability can be partly explained by the development of a large-scale irrigation project promoted by the Spanish and regional governments. Grounded on qualitative and quantitative data gathered across 22 villages, we demonstrate that small-scale diversified farmers appear the most vulnerable and least able to adapt to climate-related stressors and crop price volatility. In contrast, more market-driven, large-scale intensive farmers, who participate in the irrigation project, are the least vulnerable to these stressors. We argue that the irrigation project has increased the short-term adaptive capacity of irrigation adopters while establishing the institutional conditions for the displacement of small-scale farming. Therefore, we suggest that farmers vulnerability in Navarre can be explained by maladaptive irrigation policies designed to favour large-scale and market-driven agriculture. (c) 2019, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. This article has received funds from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under the Grant agreement no.264465 (EcoFINDERS). This research is supported also by the Basque Government through the BERC 2018-2021 program and by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness MINECO through BC3 María de Maeztu excellence accreditation MDM-2017-0714. Amaia Albizua also wants to thank the grant for contracts of Postdoctoral Training of the Education Department of the Basque Government. Esteve Corbera acknowledges the support of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona-Banco de Santander-Talent Retention Programme and the contribution of this article towards ICTA’s María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence 2015 (MDM-2015-0552)

Sustainably managed wild fisheries support food and nutritional security, livelihoods, and cultures (1). Harmful fisheries subsidies—government payments that incentivize overcapacity and lead to overfishing—undermine these benefits yet are increasing globally (2). World Trade Organization (WTO) members have a unique opportunity at their ministerial meeting in November to reach an agreement that eliminates harmful subsidies (3). We—a group of scientists spanning 46 countries and 6 continents—urge the WTO to make this commitment...

Nature is perceived and valued in many different ways. Often, the types of values that are the most important to people depend on how they cognitively frame desirable human-nature relations. For instance, the value of nature can be seen through a utilitarian lens, e.g., as providing ecosystem services for humans. Alternatively, it can also be considered valuable for non-instrumental reasons, e.g., for its sacred or spiritual significance. In this paper we use a framed field experiment to test how people belonging to three distinct communities in Colombia (Indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and Campesino) respond to different ways of framing payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes, so as to assess potential motivational crowding effects of pro-social/intrinsic motivations for forest conservation. The experimental results indicate that crowding-in of intrinsic motivations for forest conservation occurred in participants from the Indigenous community when the PES scheme was framed in a way that highlighted relational values of the forest. By contrast, motivational crowding-in took place for participants in the framed field experiment from the Campesino community when the PES scheme was introduced in a way that highlighted instrumental values instead. Participants from the Afro-Colombian community did not show evidence of motivational crowding under either framing. Together, these results suggest that PES schemes that are framed in a way that harmonizes with locally salient human-nature relational models and associated values are more likely to cause motivational crowding-in, and thus encourage higher rates of environmental conservation, even after payments are discontinued.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 Land-use intensification in agrarian landscapes is seen as a key strategy to simultaneously feed humanity and use ecosystems sustainably, but the conditions that support positive social-ecological outcomes remain poorly documented. We address this knowledge gap by synthesizing research that analyses how agricultural intensification affects both ecosystem services and human well-being in low- and middle-income countries. Overall, we find that agricultural intensification is rarely found to lead to simultaneous positive ecosystem service and well-being outcomes. This is particularly the case when ecosystem services other than food provisioning are taken into consideration.

The lack of progress in reversing the declining global trend in biodiversity is partly due to a mismatch between how living nature is conceived and valued by the conservation movement on the one hand, and by many different people, including marginalized communities, on the other. Addressing this problem calls for a pluralistic perspective on biodiversity. This requires consideration of the use of the concept of biodiversity, willingness to expand its ambit, and engagement with the multiple and multi-level drivers of change. We propose ways for conservation science, policy and practice to deliver more effective and socially just conservation outcomes. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited. Acknowledgements: We would like to offer a humble tribute to the life and ideas of Georgina M. Mace who as co-author of this paper, was a firm supporter of the role of interdisciplinary biodiversity science for improving the quality of life of all people on Earth. We would like to 516 thank the Luc Hoffman Institute for inviting us to be part of the Biodiversity Revisited project which created a fertile space among conservation scientists, policy makers and practitioners, and nurtured dialogue among the authors of this article. U.P. is supported under the Basque Centre for Climate Change ‘‘Unit of Excellence” (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; MDM-2017-0714). S.D. is supported by the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI; SDG 090), CONICET and Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. S.L. is supported by the 522 NERC-Formas-DBT project ‘Nature4SDGs’ (BT/IN/TaSE/73/SL/2018-19).

One of the main debates surrounding payments for ecosystem services (PES) is to what extent should PES design focus on social equity concerns. While much of the debate is centered around theoretical arguments, here we focus empirically on the question of whether there are trade-offs between social-environmental effectiveness and social equity in PES design and implementation. Towards this end, we use a survey targeted at 61 PES practitioners in 12 Latin American countries, where equity is treated in a multidimensional way, not only including distributional concerns but also elements of recognition and procedure, reflected across a set of 15 indicators. Results suggest that PES which practitioners describe as being more equitable are also perceived to be more successful in jointly achieving the social-environmental goals of the PES program they are involved with. This suggests that from a practitioner perspective a concern for social equity may be advocated for not only from a normative stance ( because it is the right thing to do ), but also for instrumental reasons ( because it may contribute to PES success ). © 2020 Elsevier B.V. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation in the framework of the Alexander von Humboldt-Professorship endowed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Department of Education, Language Policy and Culture of the Basque government (Grant number PI2015-1-103). B.L. and U.P. are supported under the Basque Centre for Climate Change ?Unit of Excellence? (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; MDM-2017-0714). We are thankful to Neville Ash, Brigitte Baptiste, Juan Camilo Cardenas, Mar?a Virginia Casasfranco, Eneko Garmendia, Phan Ha, Francesca Louise Mcgrath, Lucia Madrid, Ignacio Palomo, Ina Porras, Joaqu?n Salda?a, Leticia Santos de Lima, and Noelia Zafra-Calvo for their help disseminating the survey. We also thank two anonymous reviewers and and Adriana Maria Bernal Escobar, Esteve Corbera, Gert Van Hecken, Roldan Muradian, Meine Van Noordwijk, and Tobias Vorlaufer for their helpful comments to earlier drafts of the paper. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation in the framework of the Alexander von Humboldt-Professorship endowed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Department of Education, Language Policy and Culture of the Basque government (Grant number PI2015-1-103 ). B.L. and U.P. are supported under the Basque Centre for Climate Change “Unit of Excellence” ( Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness ; MDM-2017-0714 ). We are thankful to Neville Ash, Brigitte Baptiste, Juan Camilo Cardenas, María Virginia Casasfranco, Eneko Garmendia, Phan Ha, Francesca Louise Mcgrath, Lucia Madrid, Ignacio Palomo, Ina Porras, Joaquín Saldaña, Leticia Santos de Lima, and Noelia Zafra-Calvo for their help disseminating the survey. We also thank two anonymous reviewers and and Adriana Maria Bernal Escobar, Esteve Corbera, Gert Van Hecken, Roldan Muradian, Meine Van Noordwijk, and Tobias Vorlaufer for their helpful comments to earlier drafts of the paper.

The social-ecological effects of agricultural intensification are complex. We explore farmers perceptions about the impacts of their land management and the impact of social information flows on their management through a case study in a farming community in Navarra, Spain, that is undergoing agricultural intensification due to adoption of large scale irrigation. We found that modern technology adopters are aware that their management practices often have negative social-ecological implications; by contrast, more traditional farmers tend to recognize their positive impacts on non-material benefits such as those linked with traditions and traditional knowledge, and climate regulation. We found that farmers awareness about nature contributions to people co-production and their land management decisions determine, in part, the structure of the social networks among the farming community. Since modern farmers are at the core of the social network, they are better able to control the information flow within the community. This has important implications, such as the fact that the traditional farmers, who are more aware of their impacts on the environment, rely on information controlled by more intensive modern farmers, potentially jeopardizing sustainable practices in this region. We suggest that this might be counteracted by helping traditional farmers obtain information tailored to their practices from outside the social network. © 2021 Albizua et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. AA, Eusko Jaurlaritza(Postdoctoral Scholarship); https://www.euskadi.eus/ informacion/ayudas-al-personal-investigadorprograma-posdoctoral/web01-a2hunib/es/; Ministerio de Econom?a y Competitividad(ES) (MDM-2017-0714). EB, Canadian Network for Research and Innovation in Machining Technology, Natural Sciences and EngineeringResearch Council of Canada RK, European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union?s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 648693).

This paper expands the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) values framing about nature and its contributions to people by exploring the notion of ‘disvalues’, which pertains to aspects of nature that reduce well being (instrumental disvalues), relationships that are detrimental to a dignified and flourishing life (relational disvalues), or the perception of badness in an absolute sense, regardless of the impact on people (intrinsic disvalues). Shedding light on how people express disvalues helps to better capture their preferences and subjective perspectives, as well as account for the socioenvironmental positions from which they speak. Considering the full spectrum of disvalues opens up new ways to better identify social–ecological trade-offs, a necessary step for seeking solutions and finding common ground on sustainability and justice.

Sustaining the organisms, ecosystems, and processes that underpin human well-being is necessary to achieve sustainable development. Here we identify critical natural assets, natural and semi-natural ecosystems that provide 90% of the total current magnitude of 14 types of nature’s contributions to people (NCP). Critical natural assets for maintaining local-scale NCP (12 of the 14 NCP mapped) comprise 30% of total global land area and 24% of national territorial waters, while 44% of land area is required for maintaining all NCP (including those that accrue at the global scale, carbon storage and moisture recycling). At least 87% of the world’s population lives in the areas benefiting from critical natural assets for local-scale NCP, while only 16% lives on the lands containing these assets. Critical natural assets also overlap substantially with areas important for biodiversity (covering area requirements for 73% of birds and 66% of mammals) and cultural diversity (representing 96% of global Indigenous and non-migrant languages). Many of the NCP mapped here are left out of international agreements focused on conserving species or mitigating climate change, yet this analysis shows that explicitly prioritizing critical natural assets for NCP could simultaneously advance development, climate, and conservation goals. Crafting policy and investment strategies that protect critical natural assets is essential for sustaining human well-being and securing Earth’s life support systems.

The recently published article by Albizua et al. (2020) contained an error. The reference to Guerrero et al. (2013), cited in the Introduction section of the paper, was missing in the list of references. Below the full reference is provided.

Social networks influence decision-making in agricultural landscapes by affecting how farmers access knowledge and resources. However, researchers ignore the disparate structures built to access different kinds of knowledge and resources and the social mechanisms that take place on such farmers’ advice networks. We explored the role of social networks in decision-making among farmers in Navarre (Spain) to understand how and why some practices spread among farming communities. Social network analysis allows us to understand how farmers in this region share both knowledge and resources, and the potential implications of this sharing for the landscape. We find that large-scale farmers undertaking intensive land management are at the core of the network in this region, controlling the flow of knowledge and resources related to farm management, policy, technology, and finance. The central position of these farmers in the social network, and their reputation, is key to the spread of intensive farming practices in the region, which ultimately may lead to homogenization of local agricultural landscapes. Understanding farmer network structures in a context of agricultural intensification can help tease out the social mechanisms, such as farmers joining each other in cooperatives, behind the spread of agricultural practices.

Replying to G. Wells et al. Nature Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0544-3 (2020).

This paper focuses on the potential use of insurance as a climate change adaptation mechanism in agriculture. We analyse the attractiveness of a climate risk insurance scheme and the choices farmers face between adaptation via farm management practices and purchase of crop insurance in the market. A choice experiment is used to reveal Danish farmers preferences regarding an insurance contract where adoption of land management practices to improve soil sustainability is conditional for obtaining insurance cover in the market. Results indicate that in general arable farmers and farmers with low soil quality who have experienced crop damages in the past are more likely to purchase such conditional insurance. Farmers with good quality soils, who perceive that they have already adapted their practices to climatic risks and who have not experienced losses due to adverse climatic events in the past are less willing to purchase insurance. The paper contributes to the limited knowledge on preferences for climate risk related insurance in agricultural systems in general, and in Europe in particular. © 2019 The paper was prepared under EU Framework 7 project “Ecological Function and Biodiversity Indicators in European soils” (ECOFINDERS grant no. 264465 ). Furthermore, the paper has benefited from support from the PREAR project (No 652615) granted under the FACCE SURPLUS ERA-NET Cofund and funded by the Danish Innovation Fund .

Plural valuation is about eliciting the diverse values of nature articulated by different stakeholders in order to inform decision making and thus achieve more equitable and sustainable outcomes. We explore what approaches align with plural valuation on the ground, as well as how different social-ecological contexts play a role in translating plural valuation into decisions and outcomes. Based on a co-constructed analytical approach relying on empirical information from ten cases from the Global South, we find that plural valuation contributes to equitable and sustainable outcomes if the valuation process: 1) is based on participatory value elicitation approaches; 2) is framed with a clear action-oriented purpose; 3) provides space for marginalized stakeholders to articulate their values in ways that can be included in decisions; 4) is used as a tool to identify and help reconcile different cognitive models about human-nature relations; and 5) fosters open communication and collaboration among stakeholders. We also find that power asymmetries can hinder plural valuation. As interest and support for undertaking plural valuation grows, a deeper understanding is needed regarding how it can be adapted to different purposes, approaches, and social-ecological contexts in order to contribute to social equity and sustainability. Fil: Zafra-Calvo, Noelia. Basque Centre For Climate Change; España Fil: Balvanera, Patricia. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Pascual, Unai. Basque Centre For Climate Change; España Fil: Merçon, Juliana. Universidad Veracruzana; México Fil: Martín López, Berta. Leuphana University Of Lüneburg; Alemania Fil: van Noordwijk, Meine. World Agroforestry Centre; Indonesia Fil: Mwampamba, Tuyeni Heita. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Lele, Sharachchandra. Ashoka Trust For Research In Ecology And The Environmen; India Fil: Ifejika Speranza, Chinwe. University of Bern; Suiza Fil: Arias-Arévalo, Paola. Universidad del Valle; Colombia Fil: Cabrol, Diego. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias. Departamento de Desarrollo Rural; Argentina Fil: Caceres, Daniel Mario. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias. Departamento de Desarrollo Rural; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina Fil: O'Farrell, Patrick. Council For Scientific And Industrial Research; Sudáfrica Fil: Subramanian, Suneetha Mazhenchery. United Nations University. Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability; Japón Fil: Devy, Soubadra. Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environmen; India Fil: Krishnan, Siddhartha. Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environmen; India Fil: Carmenta, Rachel. University of Cambridge; Reino Unido Fil: Guibrunet, Louise. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Kraus-Elsin, Yoanna. Instituto Humboldt; Colombia Fil: Moersberger, Hannah. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Francia Fil: Cariño, Joji. Forest Peoples Programm; Reino Unido Fil: Díaz, Sandra Myrna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina

The literature on payments for ecosystem services (PES) applied in regions where indigenous peoples are key social actors has not cast much light on their preferences regarding the framing and design features that such economic incentives should have to ensure their effectiveness. Thus, it is key to find appropriate approaches that can be used to elicit the preferences of indigenous peoples regarding PES design. Here we provide new insights regarding the use of deliberative valuation to elicit of the preferences of an indigenous community from Colombia towards the design of a PES program. A deliberative choice experiment is applied that sheds light on why indigenous people's perspectives need to be taken into account if PES are to be effective and fair. We find that participants from the indigenous community value highly equity considerations that go beyond the monetary benefit that PES provide, such as being able to meaningfully participate in the design of PES or deciding the fairest way to distribute payments. © 2019 Elsevier B.V. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation , the Department of Education, Language Policy and Culture of the Basque government (grant number PI2015-1-103 and IT1359-19 [UPV/EHU Econometrics Research Group]), and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness MINECO through BC3 María de Maeztu excellence accreditation MDM-2017-0714 and through grant ECO2017-82111-R.

Relational values as preferences, principles and virtues about human-nature relationships have attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. The term has been used to include concepts and knowledge from a wide range of social sciences and humanities, e.g., importantly making space for qualitative approaches often neglected within environmental management and science. Meanwhile, crucial questions have emerged. What counts as a relational value, and what does not? How do relational values (RVs) compare with other value categories and terms, including held, assigned, instrumental, moral, shared, social, and non-material values (e.g., associated with cultural ecosystem services)? In this article, we address these issues, partly by providing context about how the RV term originated and how it has evolved to date. Most importantly, because of their somewhat unique combination of groundedness and moral relevance, positive relational values may offer important opportunities for the evolution of values that may be necessary for transformative change towards sustainability. The special issue includes contributions that contemplate particular concepts (e.g., care, stewardship, eudaimonia human flourishing), applications (e.g., environmental assessment, environmental policy design), and the history of relevant scholarship in various intellectual traditions (e.g., ecological economics, human ecology, environmental education). Together with this suite of thought-provoking papers, we hope that the clarification we provide here facilitates a broad and productive interdisciplinary exchange to create and refine a reflective but powerful tool for sustainability and justice. © 2018 We have been funded by a Canadian SSHRC Insight Grant (#435-2017-1071) and a UBC Killam Research Fellowship (KC).

Increased drought frequency in many parts of the world, especially in the global South, is expected due to accelerating climate change. We present a bioeconomic model that unpacks the role of soil biodiversity as contributing to both increasing and stabilizing agricultural productivity in low-input rainfed farming systems. The natural insurance value of soil biodiversity mostly depends on farmers' risk preferences as well as on the frequency of drought events to be insured against. We show that when the probability of drought increases, soil biodiversity conservation can be an optimal ecosystem-based adaptation strategy. However, this is only likely to be the case up to a given drought probability threshold. The natural insurance value of soil biodiversity for climate change adaptation in drought prone rainfed agricultural systems depends on a combination of key hydrological, agronomic and economic parameters. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

Payments for Environmental Services (PES) constitute an innovative economic intervention to counteract the global loss of biodiversityand ecosystem functions. In theory, some appealing features should enable PES to perform well in achieving conservationand welfare goals. In practice, outcomes depend on the interplay between context, design and implementation. Inspecting anew global dataset, we find that some PES design principles pre-identified in the social-science literature as desirable, such asspatial targeting and payment differentiation, are only partially being applied in practice. More importantly, the PES-definingprinciple of conditionality—monitoring compliance and sanctioning detected non-compliance—is seldom being implemented.Administrative ease, multiple non-environmental side objectives and social equity concerns may jointly help explain the reluctanceto adopt more sophisticated, theoretically informed practices. However, by taking simplifying shortcuts in design andimplementation, PES programmes may become less environmentally effective and efficient as economic incentives, thus underperformingtheir conservation potential.

Understanding farmers' reasons for growing diverse crop portfolios is essential for supporting the conservation of agricultural biodiversity to foster social-ecological resilience and conserve crop genetic resources. In this paper, Q methodology is applied to examine the motivations for growing diverse crops among semi-subsistence rural farmers in Papua New Guinea. Various types of farmers are identified including so-called ‘marketer-consumers,’ who are highly motivated by crop sale, and ‘exhibitionists,’ who prioritize the ‘show’ values of crops. This approach can be applied to better target programs seeking to conserve crop diversity and promote new crop varieties in regions undergoing rapid transformation.

Acknowledging the diversity of preferences, goals and motivations of individuals is key to promote the effectiveness of incentive-based conservation interventions. This paper analyses the heterogeneity of motivations to adopt silvopastoral practices, a social-ecological innovation for soil conservation and carbon emission reduction. We use Q methodology to identify smallholders' views with regard to these practices in a community in the forest frontier in Chiapas (Mexico). The analysis uncovers three main perspectives: self-sufficient pioneers, environmentally-conscious followers and payment-dependent conservatives. We discuss these perspectives around three topics: smallholders' predisposition to adopt silvopastoral practices, their views about needing external payments to sustain their livelihood and the diffusion of innovative sustainable practices. We relate these perspectives with livelihood characteristics and with observed adoption levels under a pilot programme to promote silvopasture. Our findings suggest that incentives other than payments may be more appropriate for those more likely to adopt, and that payments could encourage rent-seeking strategies and not necessarily promote permanent behavioural change. We suggest ways for designing more effective and adaptive environmental conservation programmes to foster adoption and continuation of social-ecological innovations.

This paper sheds light on the potential of group-level tenders to enhance conservation where it depends on cooperation of small-scale farmers. We analyze data from two pilot payment for ecosystem service (PES) schemes focused on the conservation of agricultural biodiversity in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes. Contracts were assigned to farming groups who could choose between different types of in-kind payments with varying degrees of divisibility between group members. Our main results indicate that: (1) stronger general patterns of collective action are positively related to the level of cooperation in group-bid making; (2) where collective action is robust, collective payments seem to provide stronger conservation incentives than individual payments; (3) collective payments could mitigate some potential rent-seeking behavior; (4) selecting bid offers based on both a ‘cooperation’ criterion and conservation land area offered does not overly compromise the cost-effectiveness of PES; and (5) group-level contracts may create strong incentives for contract compliance. Hence, combining farmer group-level contracts with collective in-kind payments can enhance the cost-effectiveness of conservation tenders, while generating co-benefits in terms of increased interaction and social capital among group members.