Publications

Hallie Eakin, Johan Enqvist, Maike Hamann, Nadine Methner, Martha Nthambi Sibanda, Jade Sullivan, Ernita van Wyk, Gina Ziervogel. 2025. Negotiating informality and urban resilience: implications for equity. Ecology and Society. https://doi.org/10.5751/es-16059-300220

Informality is a distinguishing characteristic of cities in the Global South and is strongly associated with urban inequality. Yet, in pursuing resilience, urban resilience strategies and planning have yet to grapple with the role of informality in social-ecological dynamics, resulting in incomplete representations of the reality of these cities’ socioeconomic and demographic diversity. Neglect of informality has significant, ...

Maraja Riechers, Tamara Schaal‐Lagodzinski, Laura Pereira, Jacqueline Loos, Joern Fischer. 2025. ‘Chains of leverage’ as way to identify and foster transformative potential. People and Nature. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.70144

We propose the framework of ‘chains of leverage’. It is an operationalisation to understand and analyse the transformative potential of social-ecological systems and identify leverage points for sustainability transformations through a concrete four-step approach. Step 1 : Analysing the social-ecological system regarding its core elements across system depth. Elements in a system can be situated at different system depths (f...

Laura M. Pereira, Sally Archibald, Odirilwe Selomane, Kim Zoeller, Mohammed Armani, James Kairo, Barney Kgope, Duncan M. Kimuyu, Blandina R. Lugendo, Denise Nicolau, Mike I. Olendo, Kelly Ortega-Cisneros, Lynne J. Shannon, U. Rashid Sumaila. 2025. Six principles to get natural climate solutions right in Africa. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01652-3

Wai Phyoe Maung, Yoth Vanhnasin, Sithong Thongmanivong, Andi Patiware Metaragakusuma, Alimata Sidibe, Grace Yee Wong. 2025. Rural lives and perceived well-being in commercializing landscapes of northern Laos. Wellbeing, Space and Society. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wss.2025.100320

The government of Laos views agricultural commercialization as a key policy instrument for improving the livelihoods of farm households and contributing to rural development. Recent studies indicate that these commercialization processes are not solely state-driven but are often actively embraced by local communities. Here, we examine how contemporary farming practices in the commercialized landscapes of northern Laos influenc...

Blanca González-Mon, Örjan Bodin, Xavier Basurto, Carla Lanyon-Garrido, Adrián Munguia-Vega, Mateja Nenadovic, Amy Hudson Weaver. 2025. Diversification in small-scale fisheries beyond harvesting: the role of regional trade networks. Handbook of Social Networks and the Environment. Pages 55–85. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035318759.00015

Small-scale fisheries (SSF) are comprised of multiple types of actors organized in regional trade networks that are involved in activities from harvesting to exporting fisheries’ resources. Diversification, defined as how fishers and traders along these networks harvest, buy, and/or trade different fish resources (or species), is a prevalent strategy in SSF contexts to deal with an increasingly changing environment. In this ch...

Parinaz Rashidi, Sopan D. Patil, Jan J. Kuiper, Thora Tenbrink, Jacques-Aristide Perrin, Joël Robin, Sandra Brucet, Pieter Lemmens, Mariana Meerhoff, Thomas Mehner, Lluís Benejam, Beat Oertli, Meryem Beklioğlu, Thomas A. Davidson, Aurélie Boissezon, Jeremy Biggs, Pascale Nicolet, Penny Williams, Robby Wijns, Isabel Rosa. 2025. Stakeholder perspectives on pondscapes: a multinational analysis using storylines and the Nature Futures Framework. Ecosystems and People. https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2025.2570728

Ponds and pondscapes are crucial habitats for biodiversity and provide significant ecosystem services and socio-cultural benefits. However, effective management of these habitats requires an in-depth evaluation of how stakeholders perceive them and interact with them. This study aims to explore stakeholder relationships with their local ponds and pondscapes to better understand their interactions, expectations, concerns, and p...

Yafei Wang, Yao He, Hao Zhou, Jan J. Kuiper, Murray Scown, Liam R. Carpenter‐Urquhart, Stefan Olin, Lennart Olsson, Yuxuan Ye, Shuwei Shen, Jie Fan, Garry D. Peterson. 2025. Integrating Multi‐Level Sustainability and Ecosystem Integrity for Adaptive Scenario Planning in China. Earth's Future. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EF006853

Climate change calls for adaptive strategies to manage land system across governance levels, as differing multi-level policies distinctly shape land system and long-term ecosystem resilience. This study proposes an iterative approach for optimizing land-use pathways that balance competing policy objectives across national, provincial, and local levels without compromising ecosystem integrity in a changing climate. This approac...

Elizabeth R. Selig, Colette C. C. Wabnitz, Shinnosuke Nakayama, Jaeyoon Park, Richard Barnes, Robert Blasiak, Dawn Borg-Costanzi, Bronwen Golder, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Jim Leape, Jessica L. Decker Sparks. 2025. Leveraging port state measures to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. Science Advances. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.ads1592

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing threatens the sustainability of fisheries and communities dependent on them. The Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA) is a key tool for combatting IUU fishing by foreign fleets, requiring standardized inspections, information sharing, and port denial. Using satellite data, we characterized how PSMA has affected high seas vessel behavior and identify opportunities to strengthen...

Nanda Wijermans, Caroline Schill, Therese Lindahl, Maja Schlüter. 2025. Towards Understanding Collective Resource Use: The Role of Individual Attribution of Ecological Change. Advances in Social Simulation. Pages 565–575. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-91782-0_41

Common pool resources, like fish, timber, water, are essential in providing food, income and raw material. However, maintaining sustainable practices for common pool resources is a collective challenge due to the social and ecological uncertainties. Climate impacts only further complicates the collective governance of these resources, as resource availability will substantially change and reduce. To understand how do resource ...

Massoud Behboudian, Mohammad Javad Emami-Skardi, Sara Anamaghi, Carla Sofia Santos Ferreira, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Rares Halbac-Cotoară-Zamfir, Zahra Kalantari. 2025. Social resilience of tropical forest ecosystems: A systematic review of core principles and their application. Journal of Environmental Management. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.127319

Tropical forest systems (TFSs), play a crucial role in maintaining the planet's ecological balance, supporting life on Earth, and providing different ecosystem services, which are vulnerable to environmental (e.g., severe droughts) and human-induced disturbances (e.g., deforestation).The resilience concept is usually considered in evaluating a forest system under these severe disturbances. However, while resilience evaluations...