Ten facts about land systems for sustainability.

Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits-"win-wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use.

Advancing the understanding of forest conservation dynamics through livelihood and landscape change scenarios: a case study in Chiapas, Mexico.

Forest conversion and conservation in rural settings are linked to both social and biophysical drivers. However, the joint analysis of these drivers presents methodological challenges. To address this problem, we propose a novel methodology to explore the relationship between livelihood heterogeneity and land use change at the community level. It combines the concept of archetype with the accounting scheme of MUlti-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism to define and quantify the characteristics of livelihood typologies in socioeconomic (time use, financial flows) and ecological terms (land use, agricultural inputs, soil degradation). Conservation trade-offs of potential policies are explored through "what if" scenarios assuming changes in off-farm opportunities, population growth, and conservation/farming subsidies. The approach is tested with a case study of the community of San Isidro, in Chiapas, Mexico. We conclude that the concept of livelihood typologies is useful to inform the debate over conservation prospects in rural environments. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10668-023-02965-z.

Correction: Emerging Evidence on the Effectiveness of Tropical Forest Conservation.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0159152.].

Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Global Environmental Change: Research findings and policy implications.

This paper introduces the special feature of Ecology and Society entitled "Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Global Environmental Change. The special feature addresses two main research themes. The first theme concerns the resilience of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (hereafter TEK) and the conditions that might explain its loss or persistence in the face of global change. The second theme relates to new findings regarding the way in which TEK strengthens community resilience to respond to the multiple stressors of global environmental change. Those themes are analyzed using case studies from Africa, Asia, America and Europe. Theoretical insights and empirical findings from the studies suggest that despite the generalized worldwide trend of TEK erosion, substantial pockets of TEK persist in both developing and developed countries. A common trend on the studies presented here is hybridization, where traditional knowledge, practices, and beliefs are merged with novel forms of knowledge and technologies to create new knowledge systems. The findings also reinforce previous hypotheses pointing at the importance of TEK systems as reservoirs of experiential knowledge that can provide important insights for the design of adaptation and mitigation strategies to cope with global environmental change. Based on the results from papers in this feature, we discuss policy directions that might help to promote maintenance and restoration of living TEK systems as sources of social-ecological resilience.

Integrating justice in Nature-Based Solutions to avoid nature-enabled dispossession.

Heavily featured over the last few years in global research and policy agreements, Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) remain however exposed to much debate over the ways their current design and ability to achieve both environmental goals and social needs. As they become mainstream climate mitigation and adaptation options, their capacity to deliver expected benefits, especially when contemplating equity and justice, is at least uncertain. Through a critical review of existing debates and perspectives on NBS, this paper questions their uptake and points at the frequent embeddedness of NBS in speculative and elite-based development paths in both urban and rural areas. We present an alternative, justice-oriented approach to NBS so that projects can avoid nature-enable dispossession and instead build nature-inspired justice that prioritizes the needs, identities, and livelihoods of the most ecologically and socially vulnerable residents.

Sustained participation in a Payments for Ecosystem Services program reduces deforestation in a Mexican agricultural frontier.

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) provide conditional incentives for forest conservation. PES short-term effects on deforestation are well-documented, but we know less about program effectiveness when participation is sustained over time. Here, we assess the impact of consecutive renewals of PES contracts on deforestation and forest degradation in three municipalities of the Selva Lacandona (Chiapas, Mexico). PES reduced deforestation both after a single 5-year contract and after two consecutive contracts, but the impacts are only detectable in higher deforestation-risk parcels. Enrollment duration increases PES impact in these parcels, which suggests a positive cumulative effect over time. These findings suggest that improved spatial targeting and longer-term enrollment are key enabling factors to improve forest conservation outcomes in agricultural frontiers.

Global patterns of adaptation to climate change by Indigenous Peoples and local communities. A systematic review.

Indigenous Peoples and local communities have implemented myriad responses to deal with and mitigate climate change impacts. However, little effort has been invested in compiling, aggregating, and systematizing such responses to assess global patterns in local adaptation. Drawing on a systematic review of 119 peer-reviewed publications with 1851 reported local responses to climate change impacts, we show that Indigenous Peoples and local communities across the world apply a diverse portfolio of activities to address climate change impacts. While many responses involve changes to natural resource based livelihoods, about one-third of responses involve other activities (e.g. networking, off-farm work). Globally, local responses to climate change impacts are more likely to be shaped by people's livelihood than by the climate zone where they live.

Bioenergy production and sustainable development: science base for policymaking remains limited.

The possibility of using bioenergy as a climate change mitigation measure has sparked a discussion of whether and how bioenergy production contributes to sustainable development. We undertook a systematic review of the scientific literature to illuminate this relationship and found a limited scientific basis for policymaking. Our results indicate that knowledge on the sustainable development impacts of bioenergy production is concentrated in a few well-studied countries, focuses on environmental and economic impacts, and mostly relates to dedicated agricultural biomass plantations. The scope and methodological approaches in studies differ widely and only a small share of the studies sufficiently reports on context and/or baseline conditions, which makes it difficult to get a general understanding of the attribution of impacts. Nevertheless, we identified regional patterns of positive or negative impacts for all categories - environmental, economic, institutional, social and technological. In general, economic and technological impacts were more frequently reported as positive, while social and environmental impacts were more frequently reported as negative (with the exception of impacts on direct substitution of GHG emission from fossil fuel). More focused and transparent research is needed to validate these patterns and develop a strong science underpinning for establishing policies and governance agreements that prevent/mitigate negative and promote positive impacts from bioenergy production.

Emerging Evidence on the Effectiveness of Tropical Forest Conservation.

The PLOS ONE Collection "Measuring forest conservation effectiveness" brings together a series of studies that evaluate the effectiveness of tropical forest conservation policies and programs with the goal of measuring conservation success and associated co-benefits. This overview piece describes the geographic and methodological scope of these studies, as well as the policy instruments covered in the Collection as of June 2016. Focusing on forest cover change, we systematically compare the conservation effects estimated by the studies and discuss them in the light of previous findings in the literature. Nine studies estimated that annual conservation impacts on forest cover were below one percent, with two exceptions in Mexico and Indonesia. Differences in effect sizes are not only driven by the choice of conservation measures. One key lesson from the studies is the need to move beyond the current scientific focus of estimating average effects of undifferentiated conservation programs. The specific elements of the program design and the implementation context are equally important factors for understanding the effectiveness of conservation programs. Particularly critical will be a better understanding of the causal mechanisms through which conservation programs have impacts. To achieve this understanding we need advances in both theory and methods.

How effective are biodiversity conservation payments in Mexico?

We assess the additional forest cover protected by 13 rural communities located in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico, as a result of the economic incentives received through the country's national program of payments for biodiversity conservation. We use spatially explicit data at the intra-community level to define a credible counterfactual of conservation outcomes. We use covariate-matching specifications associated with spatially explicit variables and difference-in-difference estimators to determine the treatment effect. We estimate that the additional conservation represents between 12 and 14.7 percent of forest area enrolled in the program in comparison to control areas. Despite this high degree of additionality, we also observe lack of compliance in some plots participating in the PES program. This lack of compliance casts doubt on the ability of payments alone to guarantee long-term additionality in context of high deforestation rates, even with an augmented program budget or extension of participation to communities not yet enrolled.