Degraded peatlands are significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, requiring innovative strategies for their restoration and sustainable use. Paludiculture, or wet agriculture, is an approach to align climate protection with productive land use. However, its adoption requires a deeper understanding of farmers' attitudes and targeted support to facilitate their transition from conventional to more sustainable alternatives. This study investigates pioneer farmers' motivations and barriers to adopting paludiculture in Germany. Using a qualitative approach guided by the Health Belief Model (HBM), we conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 German farmers engaged in or transitioning to paludiculture. Farmers perceived multiple threats associated with conventional drainage-based agriculture, including climate change impacts, soil degradation, and economic risks, while acknowledging paludiculture's benefits for reducing emissions, biodiversity conservation, and water management. Farmers saw themselves as confident, innovative, and cooperative-key qualities for adopting paludiculture. Nonetheless, adoption was hindered by economic challenges, bureaucratic hurdles, and limited capacity building. Support programs, networks, and historical legacies were seen as important enablers. Yet, wider adoption will require expanded support programs, strengthened markets for paludiculture products, and adaptive regulatory frameworks. Pioneer farmers' experiences can inspire others, and the leadership of experienced practitioners will be vital for driving broader adoption. Empowering farmers as agents of change and fostering collaboration among stakeholders are essential to unlocking the full potential of paludiculture as a sustainable wetland-use strategy.

Vast majority of forestry research on innovations is based on case studies, which makes it difficult to ascertain their distribution across Europe. The relation between innovating activity and the forest within which it takes place is also an under-explored research area. In this study, we address these problems by combining survey data, spatially explicit datasets and machine learning to devise geographical probability distribution of innovation development across Europe. We differentiate between innovations focused on provision of wood and those which focus on biodiversity protection, carbon storage and forest recreation. We also show that most of the variability in the data depicting innovation development can be explained by place-based variables, such as the amount of tree biomass in the forest, tree species composition, nature protection status, terrain ruggedness and road density. Results suggest the need to further explore the role of ‘place-based’ contextual variables in innovation development and highlight various issues that different policies might face when aiming to modify forest management practices in Europe.

1. High nature value (HNV) pastoral systems, that is those maintained by herding, transhumance and extensive grazing practices, are recognised as cornerstones of European biodiversity, cultural heritage and ecosystem service provision. Yet these systems are currently under significant pressure from a range of economic, social and environmental drivers. 2. The recovery of large carnivore populations across Europe, while representing a major conservation success, constitutes an additional significant pressure. Pastoral systems are predominantly located in marginal and remote areas, maintained by the grazing of extensive livestock or reindeer, and are thus both at the frontline of carnivore recovery and most vulnerable to negative impacts, such as depredation. 3. This Special Feature, bringing together 15 interdisciplinary contributions spanning pastoral and rangeland systems across Europe, the Americas, and Central and East Asia, is published at a critical juncture in European wildlife, nature restoration and agricultural policy, while also coinciding with the UN International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralism. It aims to advance integrated and interdisciplinary knowledge of coexistence with carnivores in HNV pastoralist landscapes. This editorial discusses the joint challenges, solutions and research gaps highlighted by the contributions. 4. Three primary and systemic drivers are identified as undermining pastoral resilience and associated coexistence capacity with large carnivores: the loss of mobility and common resources; unfavourable market and policy environments; and shifting social and institutional contexts. A central finding across contributions is that large carnivore impacts (including depredation) must not be treated as an isolated issue, but as one feature within this broader socio-environmental context of challenges and drivers of vulnerability in pastoral landscapes. 5. Alongside these pressures, the feature also highlights enabling conditions for coexistence, including place-based approaches, co-production of knowledge, participatory governance platforms, maintained local institutions and the meaningful integration of pastoralists' expertise. 6. The feature concludes with calls for better coordination between agricultural and conservation policy, enhanced and holistic protection of pastoral systems' resilience, and for treating coexistence as an iterative, adaptive process requiring sustained institutional commitment and trusting relationships with local communities.

Conservation agriculture is a promising approach to address the sustainability challenge of soil degradation facing Mediterranean farming systems. We documented the collective mental model of pioneering conservation agriculture farmers in Morocco, Spain, and Tunisia, including their motivations, perceived benefits, and how they overcome barriers in implementation. We find that pioneer farmers identify interlinked benefits including improved soil health and diversified farm incomes, and are motivated and aided in implementation by social factors that vary across spatial and temporal scales, ranging from individual agency to national policies. We discuss the implications of these factors for facilitating societal transition to conservation agriculture.

Protected areas have become the most widespread strategy for nature conservation, and are currently expanding worldwide. Many of them are inhabited or close to inhabited areas, shaping and being shaped by connections between people and nature. These connections are not always positive. Social fragmentation, in the form of conflicts and disconnections from nature, represents a major challenge for biodiversity conservation in protected areas. Assessing the multiple forms of people's connections with nature has shown pivotal to the development of conservation strategies that integrate ecological and social benefits. However, understanding how people articulate the role of protected areas in shaping their connections with nature remains overlooked in the literature. We use a narrative approach to investigate connections of people to protected areas based on seven dimensions: material, experiential, cognitive, emotional, philosophical, cultural and institutional. Using five protected areas in a multifunctional landscape in Central Germany as case studies, we explored narratives of connection based on in‐depth analysis of 38 semi‐structured interviews. Our main findings highlight that: (i) Narratives allow us to describe complex human–nature connections in protected areas; (ii) the novel framework of seven human–nature connections uncovered learning, regional heritage, care, multifunctional production and collaborations as key themes to better understand people's connection to nature in protected areas; (iii) different ways of connecting to nature, such as emotional, experiential and material connections, are closely linked; and (iv) the five narratives present overlaps that point at implications for protected area policy and practice. We discuss how protected areas can contribute to a reconnection to nature by reinforcing links between all dimensions of connections; considering the complexity associated with material connections; recognizing the importance of non‐material values of protected areas; improving the articulation of multiple knowledge; and supporting collaboration and trustful relationships. We argue that, to further contribute to cultural landscapes' sustainability, protected areas should focus on creating the conditions to foster diverse human–nature connections. Narratives can thereby help to identify new alliances and put nature protection and protected areas at the core of society and landscapes, rather than isolating them in conservation niches or silos. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

A deeper understanding of human-nature reciprocity is required for transformative change to safeguard biodiversity. In the face of widespread loss of farmland biodiversity and ecosystem services, evidence on how farm trees provide multiple benefits to people, and how the latter take care of the trees, can provide a nuanced example of such relationships, and illustrate how reciprocal relations can foster biocultural diversity in agricultural landscapes. In this study, we applied the reciprocity framework to appraise reciprocal relations between farmers and three farm tree species - toddy palm, jujube and thanakha - in Myanmar's Central Dry Zone. We appraised the livelihood benefits of farm trees and farmers' stewardship actions through reciprocity - by interviewing 47 farmers with rich experience and knowledge about the selected species. Our findings emphasize the role of relational values and livelihood benefits in enhancing reciprocity and highlight the importance of stewardship actions for conserving biocultural diversity. We further identify potential strategies to overcome barriers to sustaining reciprocity and argue that governmental and political interventions - capacity building of farmers, promoting livelihood benefits and cultural importance - in farm tree stewardship are needed to build more resilience in biocultural diversity and enhance the reciprocal relations of people and farm trees. Our study advances the literature on reciprocity and biocultural conservation, with nuanced insights into how reciprocity between humans and farm trees can foster transformative change in central Myanmar, and thus holds potential to inform the conservation of biocultural diversity in similar dryland food-production landscapes.

. The simplification of agricultural landscapes is a major factor in eroding the relational values connecting communities and their environments. Integrated landscape approaches help address these issues but struggle to balance conservation and production in agricultural systems. Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Sites (GIAHS) focus on preserving agricultural heritage in areas where traditional farming practices have maintained high agrobiodiversity and ensured food and livelihood security. These sites share features such as mosaic landscapes, community-based use of resources, and cultural traditions related to seasonal farming events, yet little is known about what sustains them today. This study aims to identify and classify key attributes of heritage farming systems to better understand their functioning as integrated landscape approaches. Using a Q-survey based on 34 statements and three open questions, we examined key features of heritage agricultural systems, the impacts of the GIAHS designation, and the challenges faced by local farming systems. We collected 31 responses from GIAHS community members, including experts and researchers, and identified four categories of GIAHS. Category 1 focused on product certification, category 2 was centered on producing staple foods with short marketing channels, and category 3 focused on exports. Category 4 was centered on traditions, cultural values, and reducing the impacts of climate change. Respondents shared that the designation was especially beneficial for creating awareness and stimulating policies for heritage and ecosystem preservation. It was also reported that land abandonment, the aging population, and climate change are common challenges faced by heritage farming systems. This study suggests that GIAHS share several elements with integrated landscape approaches, such as their focus on dynamic conservation, multifunctional land uses, and multi-level stakeholder engagement and their unique focus on heritage preservation may help to bridge conservation and production goals in agricultural systems.

The Life Framework of Values provides a set of archetypes of human-nature relationships (living in, living as, living from, and living with nature). Despite its potential for informing environmental decision-making, empirical research on life frames remains very limited. Such neglect can lead to certain human-nature relationships being under-represented in protected area management. In this study, we apply the Life Framework in combination with spatial analyses to explore links between people’s relationship with nature, and the values they associate with places in and around protected areas. Using public participation GIS (PPGIS) survey data from two regions in France and Germany, we aim to link the life frame approach to spatial assessments of landscape values. We identified three life frames that broadly show a high degree of correspondence with the four conceptual life frames defined in previous works, but also point at permeable and overlapping boundaries: living with and in, living from, and living as nature. We investigated how these life frames related to socio-demographic, recreational profiles, and mapped landscape values. The spatial analysis revealed a small-scale mosaic of overlaps between life frames. Our results support a better understanding and characterization of protected areas that are multifunctional in terms not only of their multiple land uses, but also their multiple meanings to people. We discuss implications for conservation planning, exploring new avenues for plural value assessment and operationalization of the life frames.

Abstract Farming systems of high natural and cultural value represent approximately 30% of farmlands in the European Union and are associated with a high species and habitat diversity and/or the presence of species of European conservation concern. This study aims to synthesize the existing knowledge on the assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services, the social‐ecological drivers of change and the innovations developed around high nature value (HNV) farming systems. We performed a systematic review of scholarly publications in English reporting empirical studies of HNV farmland in Europe. Information was extracted from 178 articles. We employed a multiple correspondence analysis and a hierarchical cluster analysis to uncover patterns in the assessment of ecosystem services and biodiversity in the HNV farming literature. A qualitative analysis of open text on challenges provided insight into drivers and their interactions. Similarly, open texts on main lessons learnt and recommendations allowed us to explore innovations. Most of the studies (n = 122, 69%) assessed the dimensions related to biodiversity in which grassland and bird diversity dominated. Six clusters were disentangled. The predominant biophysical assessment of plant diversity was generally grouped into clusters 1 and 2, while less common approaches were found in the remaining clusters, which tackled social dimensions (cluster 3), considered a wider set of biodiversity groups (cluster 5), or ecosystem services beyond provisioning services, either from a sociocultural perspective (cluster 4) or from a biophysical perspective (cluster 6). Direct drivers of change in land use in HNV farming systems are mostly related to abandonment and intensification processes. Among the indirect drivers of change, policy and institutional drivers were addressed in one‐third of the studies, with the Common Agricultural Policy being the most common driver in this category. Innovations were mostly related to technological innovations, while a limited number of articles were related to social, institutional and marketing innovations. Advisory services and knowledge transfer can have transformative potential to avoid the exclusion of marginalised farmers from being subsidised. Synergies can be promoted in policy mixes to jointly address landscape conservation and product innovation by supporting niche markets. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Global farmland biodiversity is declining rapidly, threatening both natural ecosystems and agricultural production. Although agri-environmental schemes incentivize farmers to adopt environmentally friendly measures, the spatial mismatch between their local implementation and the landscape-scale habitat requirements of farmland species has been criticized. Landscape-scale agri-environmental schemes (LAESs) are a promising approach for promoting biodiversity effectively through collaboration among multiple farmers. The success of such collaboration for biodiversity conservation relies substantially on well-functioning social networks and economic profitability for participating farmers. For an LAES to be an effective tool, it is crucial to capitalize on potential synergies among social, ecological, and economic benefits arising from collaborative implementation of LAESs and to promote positive feedback loops. We identified six potential synergies originating from the combined benefits of LAESs based on participatory workshops, expert discussions, and scientific evidence, focusing on intensive agricultural systems in Western Europe. Governance structures, such as a coordinating institution, bottom-up approaches, and adaptations to policy frameworks, can promote synergies and help overcome current challenges and trade-offs. The identified synergies and governance structures will be crucial for shaping future European agricultural policies that promote sustainable farmland biodiversity conservation and may serve as a model for transferring LAESs to other global regions.

ABSTRACT The Natura 2000 sites of the European Union form the largest protected area network globally and are widely considered a conservation success. However, many Natura 2000 sites are not in a favorable conservation status, and support by policy and society has often been low. This Perspective argues that a biocultural paradigm would open up new pathways for safeguarding those protected species and habitats that require low‐intensity land management and for empowering local communities, thus sparking local nature‐related stewardship, innovation, and inspiration. We outline five dimensions of a biocultural approach: the role of people, network design, monitoring, financial resources, and research. We also present three case examples from Romania, Germany, and Spain, where farmers’ and foresters’ landscape stewardship has preserved charismatic species and cultural identity. We conclude that a biocultural approach to Natura 2000 requires a shift in how people and nature are framed in protected areas, but not a major overhaul of conservation legislation. Our contribution is to operationalize such approach through five implementable dimensions that fit within existing law and reporting.

Participatory methods can enhance shared understanding, capacity, and collaboration in sustainability science. Drawing on insights from the GAIA participatory toolkit series, published between 2022 and 2026, we observe that the most consistently achieved impacts include the shared understanding and awareness of complex issues and the establishment of spaces for dialogue and collaboration. Success depends on trust, inclusivity, flexible design, and sustained engagement. Overall, participatory research is best understood as a process that builds foundations for longer-term sustainability transformations.

Wildfires in the Northern Mediterranean are increasing in frequency and intensity, driven by climate change, land abandonment, and fuel accumulation. Traditional fire suppression approaches are insufficient to address the complex social-ecological drivers of wildfire risk. This paper advocates adopting landscape approaches as an integrated and adaptive framework for mitigation. We assess ten wildfire mitigation initiatives in four countries, using five dimensions: multifunctionality, synergies and trade-offs, cross-sectoral integration, participation, and adaptive management. High-performing initiatives showed integrative planning, multi-actor governance, and adaptive learning. Key enablers of landscape coherence include strong leadership, institutional support, and participatory governance. However, gaps emerged in monitoring trade-offs and aligning strategies across sectors and spatial scales. Advancing landscape approaches in wildfire policy requires greater investment in collaboration, shared learning, and long-term governance capacities. Our findings offer insights to scale multifunctional, adaptive, and socially legitimate wildfire mitigation strategies in Mediterranean landscapes and beyond.

Participatory storytelling is a dynamic and inclusive method in sustainability science, enabling researchers and local communities to co-create rich, place-based narratives. Focusing on the lived experiences and voices of diverse actors, it reveals the values, emotions, and power dynamics that shape social-ecological systems. As both a research method and a space for dialogue, it helps bridge knowledge and action while supporting more raflexive and transformative sustainability practices.

In Europe, landscape planning has demonstrated its capacity to guide more sustainable landscape development and support biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people (NCP), yet its potential to enable transformative change at the scale and pace required remains insufficiently understood. This Perspective critically explores how landscape planning may need to transform in order to act as a catalyst for achieving transformative change in social-ecological systems. Building on transformative change literature and core scholarship in landscape planning, we conceptualize key tensions between transformative ambitions and planning practice as paradoxes of transformative landscape planning. We focus on three such paradoxes corresponding to major planning stages: (i) diverse versus integrated perspectives in assessing the status quo of biodiversity and NCP, (ii) radical versus acceptable futures in scenario development for landscape change, and (iii) political versus apolitical stances in evaluating impacts on ecosystem benefits, equity, and human well-being. For each paradox, we outline conceptual and methodological ways forward, illustrated through examples of planning practice with transformative potential. Synthesizing across the three paradoxes, we identify three characteristics of transformative landscape planning: systematic and contestation-aware involvement of diverse actors and knowledge systems, closer linking of planning with action to advance ecosystem restoration and sustainable use, and embedding planning within broader processes of governance change that shape the equitable distribution of nature’s contributions to people. Together, these characteristics provide a coherent framework for advancing landscape planning as a meaningful contributor to transformative change in social-ecological systems, with implications for biodiversity conservation, ecosystem governance, and human well-being.

Old-growth forest structures in small-scale private forests are strongly shaped by landscape context and can be reliably predicted using freely available spatial data. Remnant forest patches within mixed cultural landscapes act as important reservoirs and connectivity elements for forest biodiversity and should be prioritized in conservation and management planning. Many forest species of high conservation concern depend on old-growth structures, which are often rare in contemporary production forests. In small-scale private forests, these structures are fostered by inactive owners and influenced by parcel topography. We attempt to quantify the abundance of old-growth structures in small-scale private forests in Lower Saxony, Germany. Landscape-related predictors are employed to model spatial distribution patterns. The Parcel Index of Conservation Attributes (PICA) was calculated from forest structural data and modeled using a gradient boosting tree model. Independent survey data was used to evaluate its performance externally. The predictions are shown in the form of a spatial distribution map. The prediction identified parcels with a high abundance of old-growth structures. These were mostly found outside of large, more intensively managed forest regions and consisted of stands rich in broadleaf trees situated in semi-open, mixed-use cultural landscapes. Predictions about the spatial distribution of valuable habitats can be made using freely available landscape-scale data. Verifying these predictions using small samples increases the trustworthiness of the model. Forest patches in fragmented agricultural landscapes can act as islands of old-growth structures. These patches are vital for rare forest species and must be urgently protected.

Abstract People and Nature is a ‘journal of relational thinking’. This editorial explores what relational thinking can mean and how it might be operationalized in the context of humans and the environment. Relational thinking may seem intuitive because it recognizes the world's inherent interconnectedness. However, the question of how to operationalize relational thinking in social‐ecological research is rich and multifaceted. This is because doing research that embraces and advances relational thinking can be complex, particularly when research expands beyond social science to human–nature relationships with diverse organisms and ecological systems. This editorial offers one synthesis of existing work on relational thinking and outlines practical suggestions for how to recognize and implement deeper relationality in research. It synthesizes nine themes that can offer guidance for researchers who aim to clarify and strengthen how their research employs and advances relational thinking.

Around the world, many environmental and social problems often appear together, such as biodiversity loss, soil degradation, and livelihood precarity. Integrated landscape approaches have emerged as a powerful way to tackle these intertwined crises at the scale of whole landscapes, but success depends on a factor often overlooked: the motivation of people to collaborate. The objective of this study is to review and synthesize the available scientific evidence of the reasons why actors choose to collaborate in multifunctional protected landscapes. Building on existing literature, we developed an analytical framework that views collaboration as a dynamic interplay between actor-level motivators (ranging from non-material relations to nature, community or organizational ties, to material benefits) and network-level motivators (shared goals, interdependence, trusted networks, effective interactions, and clear achievements). These drivers are further shaped by broader forces such as agency, legal frameworks, social and political context, the socioeconomic conditions, and biophysical contexts. Our findings reveal a crucial insight: sustainable collaboration cannot rest on a single motivator, such as financial gain, but thrives when a "bundle of motivators" is activated. To help organizations unlock this potential, we identify seven practical levers to strengthen collaboration and maximize the impact of integrated landscape approaches. By understanding and intentionally fostering these layered motivations, landscape management can move from fragmented efforts to transformative, long-term solutions for both people and nature.

Agroforestry could play a pivotal role for agricultural transformation, but it is little adopted in temperate Europe. While prior research identified policy and law as barriers to the expansion of agroforestry, little is known about the interlinkages between actors’ personal views on agroforestry and implications for their stance on the legal framework. To address this research gap, we draw on 54 semi-structured interviews with actors from agriculture, nature conservation and administration in Germany. Based on ideal-type analysis and the heuristic of the three spheres of transformation, we propose a typology of six actor perspectives that result in different levers to scaling-up agroforestry. Actors most often associated agroforestry with beneficial regulating ecosystem services and accompanying risks for agricultural production. At the same time, actors’ understanding of agroforestry and the need to further develop the legal framework was highly diverse. From a farm-resilience-oriented and transformation-oriented perspective, actors called for lifting legal limitations and barriers for agroforestry. In contrast, conservation-oriented and traditional-agroforestry-oriented actors argued for maintaining and implementing the legal protection of traditional agroforestry systems and restrictions for modern agroforestry systems in sensitive areas. Moreover, actors that followed a production-oriented perspective highlighted the role of market dynamics. From an administration-oriented perspective, administrative guidelines and knowledge dissemination on the practical implementation of agroforestry were seen as key levers. Overall, our article offers insights into the close relationship between the personal and political sphere of transformation towards agroforestry and may inform the further development of agroforestry law.