Despite the promise of inland small-scale aquaculture for improving food security and alleviating poverty, the long-term sustainability of such production systems remains poorly understood, particularly in contexts where economic and ecological processes reinforce each other. This paper develops a stylized social-ecological model that captures feedbacks between producer wealth, fish biomass, and nutrient dynamics in inland pond-based small-scale aquaculture systems. The model reveals how these intertwined feedbacks shape the long-term dynamics of the system and lead to monostability, bistability, or multistability. These regimes correspond to a collapse, a high-yield but high-risk, and a sustainable equilibrium in fish production. Using bifurcation and stability analysis, we identify six dynamic scenarios: Balanced efficiency, Overload, Flux, Knife-edge, Tipping pond and Decay, that represent qualitatively different long-term outcomes. Rather than predicting specific outcomes, the model gives a structural understanding of small-scale aquaculture system dynamics and highlights the importance of local context and producers' heterogeneity in shaping the outcomes. It also provides a theoretical foundation for scenario-based management and empirical model development.

Climate change is increasingly constraining inland aquaculture, a critical contributor to global food and nutrition security. Here we systematically review literature in English and Chinese to synthesize climate-related impacts from 84 peer-reviewed sources to identify adaptation options and map pathways across the aquaculture value chain. We document diverse, interacting stressors affecting production systems and livelihoods, alongside 53 potential adaptation options spanning management, technology and governance. However, uptake is limited by persistent barriers, including restrictive government policy environments, insufficient financial resources and limited access to actionable information. The heterogeneity of impacts and contexts suggests that uniform solutions are unlikely to be effective. Instead, targeted strategies that mainstream aquaculture within adaptation planning, enhance policy coherence, strengthen information-sharing platforms and increase investment are required. Enabling institutional and financial conditions are pivotal to unlocking effective, context-specific adaptation in inland aquaculture.

Aquaculture has been the fastest growing food production sector globally due to its potential to improve food security, stimulate economic growth, and reduce poverty. Its rapid development has been linked to sustainability challenges, many of which are still unresolved and poorly understood. Small-scale producers account for an increasing fraction of aquacultural output. At the same time, many of these producers experience poverty, food insecurity, and rely on unimproved production practices. We develop a stylized mathematical model to explore the effects of ecological, social, and economic factors on the dynamics of a small-scale pond aquaculture system. Using analytical and numerical methods, we explore the stability, asymptotic dynamics, and bifurcations of the model. Depending on the characteristics of the system, the model exhibits one of three distinct configurations: monostability with a global poverty trap in a nutrient-dominated or fish-dominated system; bistability with poverty trap and well-being attractors; multistability with poverty trap and two well-being attractors with different characteristics. The model results show that intensification can be sustainable only if it takes into account the local social-ecological context. In addition, the heterogeneity of small-scale aquaculture producers matters, as the effects of intensification can be unevenly distributed among them. Finally, more is not always better because too high nutrient input or productivity can lead to a suboptimal attractor or system collapse.

Inland aquaculture is becoming an important source of animal-based protein in many low- and middle-income countries of Asia. In several of these countries such as Bangladesh the inland aquaculture sector is dominated by small-scale producers that rely on unimproved production practices. However, the heterogeneity of these producers is not well understood, leading to assumptions of low variability in both the underlying characteristics of aquaculture production systems, as well as their sustainability performance. This in turn can lead to the ineffective design and implementation of interventions and policies for the sustainable intensification of the sector. This study explores the differentiated characteristics, sustainability performance and preferences among carp producers in Bangladesh. We focus on Bangladesh as it is the 5th largest inland aquaculture producer globally, with the sector contributing significantly to livelihoods and food security. We undertake comprehensive in person surveys with 4540 carp producers across 54 regions of the country. We use 18 production variables to develop a nuanced typology of carp production systems using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Hierarchical Clustering Approach (HCA). We then assess whether these production systems have significantly different sustainability performance across eight socioeconomic and environmental indicators. Finally, we elicit the preferences of producers for improved carp species through three choice experiments. Overall, we identify four major types of carp production systems, characterized by very different production characteristics, sustainability performance and preferences for improved fish species attributes. Collectively, our results provide a nuanced picture of the carp aquaculture sector in Bangladesh, which moves beyond simple binaries (e.g., commercial vs. subsistence; intensive vs. extensive; large-scale vs. small-scale). This information can inform the development and implementation of fit-for-purpose interventions for the sustainable intensification of the sector.

Many coastal cities already experience severe climate change impacts and are in urgent need of an immediate shift toward transformative adaptation. Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) measures for coastal defence have garnered increasing attention as a more sustainable and cost-effective approach to foster climate-resilient development in coastal areas. This study explores the current priorities, processes, and progress of EbA implementation for coastal defence in Asia Pacific cities. It uses the Biodiversity - Climate - Society (BCS) nexus lens popularised in the first joint report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Utilising case studies from Singapore, China, and Vietnam, we evaluate the current stage and status of EbA implementation and examine interacting outcomes, feedback loops, leverage points, and tipping points within the BCS nexus. The insights drawn here from multiple cities in Asia Pacific can offer insights that could be useful to similar coastal areas in other parts of the world as well as decision-makers and stakeholders within the broader climate change community.

In response to the global call for ecosystem restoration, countries with extensive mangrove coverage have committed to ambitious restoration targets. However, challenges such as complex environmental dynamics, fragmented governance systems, and limited participation from stakeholders persist, underscoring the need to better understand the mechanisms essential for sustainable and effective mangrove management. This study aims to unravel the underlying mechanisms and implementation pathways for sustainable mangrove management through a qualitative case study in Quanzhou Bay, China. Data were collected through literature and policy reviews, alongside semi-structured interviews with 14 stakeholders, and were analyzed using an adapted SocialEcological System (SES) analysis framework focused on three core subsystems-Environmental Commons, Governance System, and Action Groups. Our findings reveal that sustainable mangrove management depends not only on ecological conditions and institutional design, but also on inclusive, adaptive governance and meaningful stakeholder participation. Notably, effective governance models facilitate the delivery of multifunctional ecosystem services by mangroves, including ecological, social-cultural, and intrinsic values. Furthermore, the collective participation of stakeholder-fostered through contracts, collaboration, and consensus-building-is crucial for promoting sustainable mangrove governance. This evidence-based understanding of how socialecological factors, ecosystem services delivery, and stakeholder engagement can inform the development of tailored management strategies in other mangrove regions worldwide, supporting the restoration goals of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration and the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

CONTEXTDiversification is an important strategy used by millions of small-scale food producers globally to improve yields, farm profitability, and food security. Diversification can also enable small-scale producers to cope better with livelihood shocks. However, it is not always clear through which pathways diversification practices can stabilize livelihoods and food security in small-scale production systems, especially in the context of the recent COVID-19 pandemic.OBJECTIVEIn this study we examined whether and how diversification practices stabilized income and food availability in small-scale food production systems during the COVID-19 pandemic. The diversification practices explored in this study included fish polyculture and integrated aquaculture-agriculture (IAA), and their combination. We compared small-scale systems employing different combinations of these diversification strategies, with systems that did not contain them.METHODSWe analyzed 300 surveys of small-scale aquaculture producers in Myanmar. Structural equation modeling was applied to examine the multivariate relationships between the adoption of diversification practices among the small-scale producers, and whether and how the adoption stabilized their livelihoods during the COVID-19 pandemic in Myanmar.RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONSWe find that the integration of diversification practices in different small-scale aquaculture-agriculture (SSAA) production systems had generally positive effects for the stabilization of income, food availability or both during the COVID-19 pandemic. The novelty of the study is the unraveling of the differentiated pathways between production models that enabled these stabilization processes emerge. We find major divergences in the stabilization potential between polyculture and IAA, both in terms of the magnitudes of the stabilization effects and the pathways. Polyculture generally offered more significant stabilizing effects than IAA. Surprisingly the highest and more significant positive effects for the stabilization of food availability came through the purchase of food items from extra fish/crop income, rather than their increased self-consumption.SIGNIFICANCEOverall, the SSAA production systems combining different diversification practices could form proactive strategies to help small-scale food producers cope with livelihood shocks.

This Data Descriptor contains a dataset with the production characteristics and socioeconomic performance of small-scale carp aquaculture systems in Bangladesh. The dataset was collected through a structured household survey with 4,540 producers from 54 upazilas (analogous to counties) across Bangladesh. Study upazilas were systematically selected to represent both locations with substantial carp production currently and locations with such future potential. Respondents were randomly selected through carp producer lists in each study upazila. Information about the production characteristics includes farm/pond sizes, fish species, production technologies, feed/seed use, and aquaculture expenditures, among others. Information about the performance includes fish output and sales, as well as household income, poverty and food security, among others. This dataset can be valuable to researchers, practitioners and policy-makers that wish to explore the heterogeneity and differentiation of small-scale aquaculture production systems and the factors affect their performance in Bangladesh and other developing countries.

Mangroves are one of the most biodiverse but degraded type of ecosystems globally. There has been a strong impetus for mangrove restoration globally to compensate for mangrove loss. Understanding the public acceptability and preference heterogeneity for mangrove restoration could help practitioners tailor restoration programs, improve stakeholder engagement, and ultimately improve the chances of restoration success. Here we conduct a choice experiment to understand the heterogeneity of public acceptability for mangrove restoration in the Large Xiamen Bay (LXB), China. We estimate the total economic value of mangrove restoration and compare the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for each attribute (including an ecosystem disservice) between participants with different socio-demographic characteristics and living locations. Using both the random parameter logit model and latent class model, our results reveal that the respondents' location, socio-demographic characteristics, interaction with the coastal environment, and knowledge about mangroves have significant effects on their acceptability and preference for mangrove restoration. Such findings can provide guidance to practitioners when planning and implementing mangrove restoration projects, to improve the effectiveness and equity of restoration actions in LXB and beyond. By including an ecosystem disservice our study arguably elicits more comprehensively preference tradeoffs, which should be considered in future applications of choice experiments for ecosystem restoration.

Traditional approaches to coastal defence often struggle to reduce the risks of accelerated climate change. Incorporating nature-based components into coastal defences may enhance adaptation to climate change with added benefits, but we need to compare their performance against conventional hard measures. We conduct a meta-analysis that compares the performances of hard, hybrid, soft and natural measures for coastal defence across different functions of risk reduction, climate change mitigation, and cost-effectiveness. Hybrid and soft measures offer higher risk reduction and climate change mitigation benefits than unvegetated natural systems, while performing on par with natural measures. Soft and hybrid measures are more cost-effective than hard measures, while hybrid measures provide the highest hazard reduction among all measures. All coastal defence measures have a positive economic return over a 20-year period. Mindful of risk context, our results provide strong an evidence-base for integrating and upscaling nature-based components into coastal defences in lower risk areas. This meta-analysis compares the performance of hard, hybrid, soft and natural coastal defence measures. Results show that all measures have a positive economic return over 20 years yet hybrid measures perform best for climate adaptation and mitigation.

Achieving sustainable dietary change is essential for safeguarding human and environmental health. However, dietary recommendations based on broad food groups may not accurately reflect real-world realities because individuals select and consume dishes with multiple food items influenced by diverse context-specific factors. Therefore, here we explored the sustainability trade-offs of dietary choices at the dish level through an optimization modeling approach tested in Japan. We estimated the nutritional quality, price, and carbon footprint of major Japanese dishes and examined 16 dietary scenarios to identify options that meet the nutritional requirements and minimize carbon footprint. Overall, mixed diets contain more combinations of dishes that meet nutritional requirements with lower carbon footprints compared to more restrictive dietary scenarios. We argue that the approach developed here enables a better understanding of dietary trade-offs, complements existing methods, and helps identify sustainable diets by offering nuanced information at the national and sub-national levels.

Mangroves are a unique ecosystem that provide a wealth of ecosystem services, and hence societal goods and benefits for coastal populations. However, mangroves have long been deforested for human uses. This chapter synthesises knowledge on the benefits of mangroves, their historical and current status, the threats they face, and existing and emerging strategies for their conservation and restoration. Global mangrove loss has slowed substantially since the 1970s‐80s, although mangroves are still threatened by a range of anthropogenic and environmental stressors. Multiple conservation approaches exist, with recent interest in the use of carbon credits. Restoration is possible, but ambitious targets face substantial challenges in their implementation. Solving these challenges will make mangroves a conservation success story.

Coastal social-ecological systems (SES) are essential for the wellbeing of coastal communities and the wider society. However, in many parts of the world coastal SES face rapid change, and ultimately degradation. In this paper we unravel the mechanisms and implications of change in coastal SESmobilising multiple sources of knowledge, including scientific, expert-based and traditional and local knowledge (TLK). We focus on the rapidly changing Nakatsu mudflat in Japan, and combine primary and secondary data elicited through a mixed-method participatory approach that mobilised local stakeholders with different types of engagement with (and knowl-edge of) the mudflat. Through 4 expert interviews and 40 questionnaire surveys we identified the main ecosystem services provided by the mudflat that are perceived to be essential to the wellbeing of the local community. Although practically all respondents identified food provision as an important mudflat ecosystem services, many also pointed to the importance of some cultural (e.g. aesthetic beauty, spirituality, education and knowledge) and supporting services (e.g. habitat provision, sediment formation/retention). Through 8 Focus Group Discussions (FGD) and concept mapping we identified and systematized the underlying direct and indirect drivers of ecosystem change in the Nakatsu mudflat. These include population ageing and shrinking, economic diversification, and technological change that have collectively eroded TLK practices associated with the sus-tainable use of the mudflat. We also identified the mechanisms mediating these drivers and how they unfold in reality. Our study demonstrates that participatory processes engaging multiple stakeholders with different types of knowledge can provide rich and useful information on coastal SES change, which might not be readily obvious from simple headline indicators such as the change in the extent of the SES.

Although biodiversity is a central component of food systems, conventional food systems have become one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss globally. There is an increasing need to transform food systems to provide sufficient and nutritious food, but with minimal negative impacts on the environment and society. One of the possible avenues to enable the sustainable transformation of food systems might be through the development of locally appropriate biodiversity-based solutions. In this paper we report the insights and lessons learned during the design and implementation of transdisciplinary projects that employed the concept of Sustainable Development Goals labs (SDG-Labs) to create biodiversity-based solutions to transform food systems. The six SDG-Labs outlined in this paper were implemented in Armenia, China, Japan, Madagascar, Thailand, and Uganda. Collectively they developed very diverse biodiversity-based solutions that used different components of biodiversity, ranging from novel cultivation systems with endangered plants, to gardens using tree species for wind breaks, or novel tea-forestry production systems. Beyond their ability to leverage different components of biodiversity to transform local food systems (also conserving biodiversity in the process), all solutions had multiple co-benefits such as climate change adaptation/mitigation and livelihoods generation, among other sustainability domains. Through a Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) analysis we synthesized the experiences gained during the design and implementation of all six SDG-Labs. The findings suggest the great promise of these transdisciplinary approaches for developing solutions at the biodiversity-food-climate nexus. However, this synthesis paper also points to the multiple context-specific challenges that should be overcomed to maximize the potential of SDG-Labs to both enable the sustainable transformation of (local) food systems and/or be scaled up effectively.

Mangroves provide a multitude of ecosystem services that are threatened due to extensive mangrove degradation globally. Restoration actions have been receiving growing attention for reinstating some of these critically important ecosystem services. Understanding societal perceptions about ecosystem restoration and the services that can be enhanced via them, is critical for designing and implementing effective and equitable landscape and seascape restoration actions. Here, we elicit societal perceptions toward mangrove restoration, and the perceived importance of the ecosystem services it can provide, through 1600 surveys with coastal residents in the Large Xiamen Bay (China). We focus on four districts with different environmental and socioeconomic characteristics, and elicit the perceived importance of mangrove ecosystem services through the Analytical Hierarchy Process. Subsequently we identify the factors affecting these perceptions through regression analysis and redundancy analysis. Overall, the analysis suggests that coastal residents in the four districts have diverse perceptions about the importance of mangrove ecosystem services, with provisioning services receiving higher weights in most cases. Conversely respondents supporting and willing to pay for mangrove restoration tend to assign greater importance to regulating services such as climate regulation and coastal protection. Notably, some of the characteristics of the respondents and their districts significantly influence some of these perceptions. This evidence-based understanding of what affects the perceptions about mangrove restoration (and the ecosystem services it provides) can inform the development of landscape-scale restoration actions that are fit for purpose and can contribute to achieving the restoration goals of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration and the Post -2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

Small-scale aquaculture systems can contribute significantly to food and nutritional security, poverty alleviation, and rural development, especially in developing countries. However, the intensification of aquaculture systems often has negative environmental outcomes. The adoption of diversification practices (e.g. polyculture, pond-dike cropping (PDC)) and better management practices (BMPs) has been identified as a possible approach to intensify sustainably small-scale aquaculture production. This study assesses the sustainability outcomes of the adoption of diversification practices and BMPs in small-scale production models. We focus on Myanmar, a developing country characterized by a rapidly expanding small-scale aquaculture sector. We analyze 624 household surveys with small-scale aquaculture producers in central and northern Myanmar. We estimate the effects of diversification practices and BMPs on different sustainability outcomes, namely economic outcomes (i.e. aquaculture yield and benefit-cost ratio), environmental outcomes (i.e. nitrogen and phosphorus use efficiency), and food security outcomes (i.e. fish self-consumption and household dietary diversity) through linear mixed-effects models. Our results reveal that diversified production models (whether integrating or not integrating BMPs) could have significant positive effects on economic and food security outcomes, as well as phosphorus use efficiency, compared to ‘unimproved monoculture’. However, such production models do not seem to have any major effect on nitrogen use efficiency. The adoption of BMPs on diversified production models seems to have little (if any) added effect on any of the studied sustainability outcomes, which suggests the need to improve existing BMPs or even develop new BMPs fit for Myanmar’s context. These findings have implications about the possible contribution of diversification practices and BMPs for enabling sustainable intensification in small-scale aquaculture settings in Myanmar, and other rural developing contexts.

The rapid mangrove loss and fragmentation observed in the past decades have catalyzed numerous efforts to restore mangroves globally, but nearly half of these efforts fail or underperform. Planting the wrong mangrove species on the wrong site, and overrelying on mangrove monocultures are the main mistakes. Here, we develop a methodological approach that combines a Geographic Information System-based suitability analysis and landscape connectivity analysis to identify suitable areas for species-specific and mixed-species mangrove restoration, and priority areas in terms of patch importance. We apply this approach to the Large Xiamen Bay in southeast China. Results from the case study emphasize the critical need of considering species-specific characteristics in mangrove restoration planning and the spatial heterogeneity of priority areas for mixed-species restoration. We find that mangrove restoration could indeed increase landscape connectivity of mangrove habitats. Larger patches would have more significant effects on habitat connectivity, and several small patches could be considered as stepping stones to promote landscape-level connectivity. The proposed approach has various implications for mangrove restoration efforts both at the study site and in other parts of the world.

Nature contributes substantially to human well-being through its diverse material and nonmaterial contributions. However, despite the growing literature on the nonmaterial dimensions of human-nature relations, we lack a systematic understanding of how they are linked with human well-being. Here, we use the concept of cultural ecosystem services (CESs) as a lens to explore this interface. Through a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature, we elicit the unique pathways and mechanisms linking individual CESs and constituents of human well-being, as well as their relative effects. Subsequently, we identify their complex interactions through latent class analysis and multiple correspondence analysis, which delineate five major assemblages that reflect synergies and trade-offs at the interface of CESs and human well-being. We critically discuss key research trends and gaps and propose directions for future research and practice to leverage the potential of the nonmaterial contributions of nature for human well-being and sustainability more broadly.

This dataset is used to conduct a comprehensive meta-analysis of the peer-reviewed literature on mangrove restoration to estimate its outcomes across different functions and economic costs/benefits. The peer-reviewed literature were firstly searched through ISI Web of Science and Elsevier Scopus using generic wording for restoration impact without restriction on publication year on 22 December 2019. The second search was conducted using a refined keywords of 26 identified ecosystem function categories on 30 June 2020. In total, we identified 396 cases from 188 quantitative studies focusing on the effects of mangrove restoration on different functions, as well as economic costs and benefits of mangrove restoration. 975 observations from 89 studies covered 22 types of functions met the criteria to perform meta-analyses. We also extracted 30 cases spanning ten types of economic benefits and 68 cases spanning six types of restoration costs to conduct benefit-cost analysis.