As the scale of climate change impacts become apparent, organisations globally are seeking to adapt. They face dual imperatives of transformation—going beyond business-as-usual to embrace disruptive changes to their decision-making processes—and mainstreaming—enacting adaptation initiatives with minimal change to existing capabilities and structures. In practice, these important imperatives can conflict, leading to the emergence of multiple tensions in developing and implementing adaptation initiatives, potentially paralysing action or leading to one imperative dominating. We call this the Transformation-Mainstreaming Conundrum (TMC) and suggest that both imperatives can (and must be) pursued simultaneously in practice. This perspective identifies recognisable tensions that can arise when seeking to address both imperatives and suggest steps towards responding to the underlying issues these tensions reveal. The TMC needs to be recognised, and approaches to navigating its tensions must be addressed explicitly in both scholarship and practice, to re-energise the urgency of scaling up adaptation efforts.

AbstractIn light of the escalating pace and heightened intensity of contemporary climate change and human interventions, a more systematic and comprehensive approach to research has become imperative for the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within dryland regions. In 2017, a collaborative research consortium comprising experts from diverse nations proposed the Global Dryland Ecosystem Programme (Global-DEP). This initiative was designed to address the intricate challenges inherent in the diverse and fragile social-ecological systems (SESs) of drylands. Drawing from a synthesis of preceding studies on dryland SESs and insights garnered from extensive regional consultations, the consortium crafted the conceptual framework of Global-DEP, with SESs as its fundamental underpinning. Key elements of the frame-work encompass driving forces, impacts, feedback loops, and scale. The team identified four pivotal themes: (1) dryland SES dynamics and driving forces, (2) dryland SES structure and functions, (3) dryland ecosystem services and human well-being, and (4) ecosystem management and sustainable livelihoods in drylands. The intricate interconnections among these themes were meticulously examined to delineate 12 critical research priorities. Anchored upon this conceptual framework and the identified research imperatives, the Global-DEP science plan was formulated. This plan is poised to expedite actionable interdisciplinary research within dryland SESs, tailored to the regional and cultural nuances of these areas. The final aim is to bolster dryland research endeavors, catering to the requirements of land practitioners and policymakers, while effectively contributing to the attainment of SDGs in drylands.

Non-technical summary To address increasingly pressing social-environmental challenges, the transformative strand of sustainability science seeks to move beyond a descriptive-analytical stance in order to explore and contribute to the implementation of radical alternatives to dominant and unsustainable paradigms, norms, and values. However, in many cases, academia is not currently structured to support and reward inter-/trans-disciplinary and transformative endeavors. This paper introduces a theory of change for the Future Earth Pathways Initiative, and similar initiatives, to help leverage the capacity of sustainability scientists to engage in transformative research.Technical summary The increasing body of descriptive-analytical knowledge produced by sustainability science over the last two decades has largely failed to trigger the transformation of policies, norms, and behaviors it was aiming to inform. The emergent transformative strand of sustainability science is a proactive alternative approach seeking to play an active role in processes of societal change by developing knowledge about options, solutions, and pathways, and by participating in their implementation. In principle, scientists can enhance their contribution to more sustainable futures by engaging in transformative research. However, a lack of skills and competencies, relatively unmatured transformative methods and concepts, and an institutional landscape still geared toward disciplinary and descriptive-analytical research, still hinders the sustainability science community from engaging more widely in transformative research. In this paper, the Future Earth Pathways Initiative introduces a theory of change (ToC) for increasing the capacity of sustainability scientists to engage in this type of research. This ToC ultimately aims to build a growing community of practitioners engaged in transformative research, to advance concepts, methods, and paradigms to foster 'fit-for-purpose transformative research', and to shape institutions to nurture transformative research-friendly contexts.Social media summary What would a theory of change for leveraging the transformative capacity of sustainability science look like?

In the first 27 years of the Central Australian Laboratory (CAL), to 1980, research focussed almost entirely on the needs of the pastoral industry. By the 1980s, ongoing campaigns for Aboriginal land rights and demands to conserve biodiversity plainly showed that there were other land uses deserving research attention. Initially CAL’s research agenda expanded to include conservation in spinifex grasslands and grazing lands but remained biophysical in nature. It subsequently became clear that people’s roles in decision-making about land use and management should be part of research. By the 2000s, scientists were able to build trusting relationships with Aboriginal people and organisations and undertake collaborative studies to improve livelihoods and wellbeing on country. Over the 38 years from 1980 to 2018, CAL’s research activities responded to diverse societal expectations but it was not enough to prevent the laboratory’s eventual closure as public investment in rangelands dwindled.

Transformative urban development is urgent to achieve future sustainable development and wellbeing. Transformation can benefit from shared and cumulative learning on strategies to guide urban development across local to national scales, while also reflecting the complex emergent nature of urban systems, and the need for context-specific and place-based solutions. The article addresses this challenge, drawing on extensive transdisciplinary engagement and National Strategy co-development processes for Australia. This includes generation of two frameworks as boundary objects to assist such transdisciplinary strategy development. An ‘enabling urban systems transformation’ framework comprises four generic overarching transformation enablers and a set of necessary underpinning urban capacities. This also built cumulatively on other sustainability and urban transformation studies. A complementary ‘knowledge for urban systems transformation’ framework comprises key knowledge themes that can support an integrated systems approach to mission-focused urban transformations, such as decarbonising cities. The article provides insights on the transdisciplinary processes, urban systems frameworks, and scoping of key strategies that may help those developing transformation strategies from local to national scales. Science highlights • Transdisciplinary national urban strategy development is used to distil generic frameworks and strategy scopes with potential international application. • The frameworks also build on other published framings to support convergent, cumulative and transdisciplinary urban science. • The ‘enabling transformations’ and ‘urban knowledge’ frameworks include the perspective of those developing sustainable urban systems strategies. • The enabling framework also informs ‘National Urban Policy’ and ‘Knowledge and Innovation Hub’ strategies, and prevailing power imbalances. • The knowledge framework can help frame urban challenges, missions and knowledge programs. Policy and practice recommendations • An urban ‘transformation imperative’ and ‘strategic response’ can be co-developed from local to national scales. • Local initiative is crucial to drive urban strategies, but sustained national leadership with coherent policy across sectors and scales is also key. • Diversity in engagement participation and processes generates whole-of-urban-systems and local-to-national perspectives. • Urban solutions are context-specific but generic frameworks can help collaborative issue framing and responses. • Collaborative issue framing informed by generic frameworks can bring broader perspectives to context-specific and contested policy and practice issues.

The design of development interventions must cope with increasing rates of environmental change and of connectedness among problems. As a consequence, most design processes now demand, at least rhetorically, that design is based on a resilience approach. However, there has been limited analytical attention paid to the context within which such approaches are deployed. Through two intensive applications of one tool to support design with a resilience approach, the Resilience, Adaptation Pathways and Transformation Approach (RAPTA), we qualitatively explore its effectiveness in different settings: one, a top-down national design of a food security project under the Global Environment Facility, and the other a bottom-up, local community project aimed at agricultural livelihoods. In both cases, the resilience approach widened the solutions space and identified impact pathways that might otherwise have been missed. However, the context affected the value of the resilience approach: one case was constrained by a donor’s program objectives that did not necessarily align with what stakeholders saw as the most important pathways locally; whilst the other was open-ended as regards any programmatic constraints but without assured funding. In both cases, the resilience approach helped to open the eyes of participants to: systems risks such as irreversible change and thresholds; whether adaptation or transformation was needed to achieve resilience; and what partners were needed to deliver complementary impact pathways that might be outside a donor’s mandate. The case studies not only highlighted how a resilience approach enriches the analysis of the system of interest, but also showed that the systems analysis may need to consider the context of funding practices, design processes and implementing actors, and how these affect efficient, effective, and ethical outcomes. Combining the best of top-down and bottom-up approaches requires greater flexibility in the intervention design processes adopted by development donors, paying attention to who is involved in design and who defines the scope.

As the world recognises the need to adapt to unavoidable climate change, diverse adaptation planning and risk assessment guides have emerged, with the legitimate intent of providing context- or sector-specific guidance. Despite this, adaptation seems challenged to move to action, and users of guides often report being overwhelmed or confused. New guides seem to continually re-invent the details of the adaptation cycle of planning and implementation, whereas it may be better to focus more on making these details salient to users at different stages of their adaptation journey, in terms of levels of experience or organisational process. We review 39 guides to identify leading practice around a basic set of six core steps in an adaptation cycle, which could be the starting point for any new guide. We then argue that it should be standard to provide guidance about different modes of applying an adaptation cycle in practice, which can help practitioners with different types of use and as they evolve their understanding of their adaptation needs. We show how defining three archetypal modes of adaptation cycle – Scan, Portfolio and Project – helps to sharpen the advice about the approaches to apply in each of the steps within each mode, and particularly to simplify the journey to action for practitioners considering climate adaptation for the first time. We discuss what response users have had to some applications of this approach. We conclude that it is time for adaptation researchers and practitioners to move on from putting energy into re-inventing the adaptation cycle, and instead provide more differentiated guidance for how the cycle can be applied as the user's context changes through their adaptation journey.

Drylands cover approximately 41％of the global land surface and provide homes to more than two billion people.Collectively,drylands constitute the largest terrestrial biome on the planet,and despite their low productivity per land area compared to other ecosystems,they have a major impact on the ecological function-ing and climate of our planet through carbon storage,albedo,dust production,and water cycling[1].

Inequalities in benefits from ecosystem services (ES) challenge the achievement of sustainability goals, because they increase the vulnerability of socio-ecological systems to climate hazards. Yet the unequal effects of changes in ES, and of climate change more generally, on human well-being (HWB) are still poorly accounted for in decision-making around adaptation, particularly in tropical countries. Here, we investigate these dynamics through the lens of local peoples' perceptions of ES in relation to human well-being (HWB), and how these are affected by climate change in three distinct regional case studies in the Atlantic Forest in Southeast of Brazil. Through structured questionnaires, we found that the local perceptions of important ES are region-dependent, particularly identifying services regulating local climate and air quality, water flow and quality, food provisioning, and cultural services of landscape esthetics related to forest regeneration. HWB was expressed through material (e.g., economic security, environmental conditions) and higher accounts of non-material (e.g., feelings, health and social connections) dimensions. Specific environmental changes were identified by 95% of those responding, 40% of whom included climate change as one of these. When asked about climate directly, 97% of those responding identified relevant changes in regionally relevant ways. Rising temperatures, unbalanced seasons, altered rainfall patterns, drought, increase of extreme events, and sea level rise are negatively affecting both material and non-material dimensions of HWB across regions. These perceived changes aligned with observed and projected climate changes in the regions. Benefits from ES accrue for HWB at different scales depending on the specific ES and region. For example, crop production by small farmers or exported in sugar cane, water captured for agricultural irrigation or used for urban supplies, and fish resources for local consumption and lifestyle or as a recreational attraction for visitors. Policy choices about such balances will affect local vulnerabilities to the expected future climate and other environmental changes in the region. This place fine-scale observations and the empowerment of local knowledge at the core of policy decisions about adaptation to support a climate-resilient future for traditional communities and small farmers.

Infrastructure investment needs to account for climate change globally, yet most day-to-day projects are small and poorly served by economic assessment processes. Four simple adjustments to cost–benefit analysis practices would greatly improve decision making for future infrastructure resilience.

Australia's rangelands contain wildlands, relatively intact biodiversity, widespread Indigenous cultures, pastoral and mining industries all set in past and present events and mythologies. The nature of risks and threats to these rangelands is increasingly global and systemic. Future policy frameworks must acknowledge this and act accordingly. We collate current key information on land tenures and land uses, people and domestic livestock in Australian rangelands, and discuss five perspectives on how the rangelands are changing that should inform the development of integrated policy: climate and environmental change, the southern rangelands, the northern rangelands, Indigenous Australia, and governance and management. From these perspectives we argue that more attention must be paid to: ensuring a social licence to operate across a range of uses, acknowledging and supporting a younger, more Indigenous population, implementing positive aspects of technological innovation, halting capital and governance leakages, and building human capacity. A recommended set of systemic responses should therefore (i) address governance issues consistently and comprehensively, (ii) ensure that new technologies can foster the delivery of sustainable livelihoods, and (iii) focus capacity building on a community of industries where knowledge is built for the long-term, and do all three of these with an eye to the changing demographics of the rangelands.

This chapter describes four case studies – three from Australia and one from rural Indonesia – that build the argument that to enhance the potential for multiple benefits, climate adaptation needs to be integrated into development and planning processes. The case studies demonstrate (1) the early benefits from adaptation to coastal inundation, (2) the importance of considering the distribution of costs and benefits across communities, (3) the low-regrets nature of some early adaptation actions and (4) the synergies between adaptation measures and sustainable development. By demonstrating the multiple benefits of climate adaptation, case studies like these have stimulated thinking about climate adaptation in terms of adaptation pathways and climate-compatible development. Early adaptation creates resilience by maintaining diversity, flexibility and adaptability – factors that enable people to benefit from future opportunities. Adaptation pathways approaches help stakeholders better understand how adaptation can address the systemic drivers of vulnerability and how to integrate adaptation into broader planning approaches.

The achievement of global sustainability agendas, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, relies on transformational change across society, economy, and environment that are co-created in a transdisciplinary exercise by all stakeholders. Within this context, environmental and societal change is increasingly understood and represented via participatory modeling for genuine engagement with multiple collaborators in the modeling process. Despite the diversity of participatory modeling methods to promote engagement and co-creation, it remains uncertain what the extent and modes of participation are in different contexts, and how to select the suitable methods to use in a given situation. Based on a review of available methods and specification of potential contextual requirements, we propose a unifying framework to guide how collaborators of different backgrounds can work together and evaluate the suitability of participatory modeling methods for co-creating sustainability pathways. The evaluation of method suitability promises the integration of concepts and approaches necessary to address the complexities of problems at hand while ensuring robust methodologies based on well-tested evidence and negotiated among participants. Using two illustrative case studies, we demonstrate how to explore and evaluate the choice of methods for participatory modeling in varying contexts. The insights gained can inform creative participatory approaches to pathway development through tailored combinations of methods that best serve the specific sustainability context of particular case studies.

Climate change is threatening water security in water-scarce regions across the world, challenging water management policy in terms of how best to adapt. Transformative new approaches have been proposed, but management policies remain largely the same in many instances, and there are claims that good current management practice is well adapted. This paper takes the case of the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia, where management policies are highly sophisticated and have been through a recent transformation in order to critically review how well adapted the basin’s management is to climate change. This paper synthesizes published data, recent literature, and water plans in order to evaluate the outcomes of water management policy. It identifies several limitations and inequities that could emerge in the context of climate change and, through synthesis of the broader climate adaptation literature, proposes solutions that can be implemented when basin management is formally reviewed in 2026.

Recent years have seen growing calls to govern land resources as global environmental commons, delivering benefits to all of humanity in support of the Sustainable Development Goals. Applying this call to drylands ? almost half of the world?s land ? allows responses that are better tailored to dryland attributes. Four key elements for global drylands governance emerge from linking an understanding of drylands attributes with recent global governance scholarship: the need for a polycentric system with nested goal setting, transparent monitoring and graduated sanctions. These elements require nuanced application in drylands, with an emphasis on empowering the local. We describe how the present global governance architecture for drylands ? the UN Convention to Combat Desertification ? provides a partial scaffolding, but falls short in specific areas that deserve attention.