Publications

Rachel Mazac, Minna Kaljonen, Kaisa Kurki, Niko Räty, Sanja Tuovila, Iryna Herzon. 2025. Planetary plate puzzle. International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts. https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2025.2501067

The debate around dietary change, particularly the importance of culturally acceptable changes, has become highly polarised, hindering societal transitions towards sustainability. Serious games have been used as effective deliberation tools fostering safe spaces for co-creation and respectful participation. We designed a serious game, the Planetary Plate Puzzle, aimed at investigating ecologically and culturally sufficient die...

Katja Malmborg, Jacqueline Hamilton, Carolin Seiferth. 2025. Leveraging place-based identities and senses of belonging to mobilize for action-oriented research in UNESCO sites. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2025.101536

With increasing land-use pressures on landscapes, it is critical to improve their governance while being inclusive of those living there. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites and Biosphere Reserves play a crucial role in protecting both social and ecological values in designated landscapes, making them interesting sites for action-oriented research. The designation and ...

Ana Paula Dutra Aguiar, David Collste, Sofia Cortés-Calderón, Taís Sonetti-González, Minella Alves-Martins, Antonio J. Castro, Amadou Diallo, Karl Martin Eriksson, Deborah Goffner, Zuzana V. Harmáčková, Amanda Jiménez-Aceituno, María D. López-Rodríguez, María Mancilla-García, Veronica Olofsson, Aldrin Martin Pérez Marin, Francisco Gilney Silva-Bezerra, Hanna Sinare, Claire Stragier. 2025. Unraveling deep roots in drylands: a systems thinking participatory approach to SDGs. Global Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2025.6

Achieving sustainability on the ground poses a challenge in decoding globally defined goals, such as sustainable development goals, and aligning them with local perspectives and realities. This decoding necessitates the understanding of the multifaceted dimensions of the sustainability challenges in a given context, including their underlying causes. In case studies from Brazilian drylands, we illustrate how an enhanced multis...

Paula Andrea Sánchez-García, Barbara Schröter, Torsten Krause, Andrew Sean Merrie, Laura Pereira, Jonas Østergaard Nielsen, Lasse Loft. 2025. A decolonial and participatory research approach to envision equitable transformations toward sustainability in the Amazon. Futures. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2025.103638

How people relate to and see themselves as part of nature relations differs worldwide and often depends on culture and worldviews. Nonetheless, challenging the dominant Euro-Western epistemic domination is needed to attain more equitable and sustainable future visions. This change entails fostering decolonial mediation between different knowledge systems in a context of intersectional difference. The collective struggles of Bl...

Gianelli, I., Trimble, M., Juri, S., Pereira, L.M., González-Mon, B., Villasante, S.. 2025. The seeds’ substrate: a concept to understand how transformations toward Good Anthropocenes can be enabled. Ecology and Society. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-15792-300138

The importance of connectedness in laying the ground for social-ecological transformations or in spreading new ideas and practices for transformation is increasingly recognized. However, the role of networks in supporting the emergence and growth of seeds (initiatives with the potential to positively shape the future) has not yet been comprehensively studied empirically. To this end, we introduce a novel concept, the seeds’ su...

Erik Zhivkoplias, Jessica M. da Silva, Robert Blasiak. 2025. How transdisciplinarity can help biotech-driven biodiversity research. Trends in Biotechnology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2025.04.008

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework marks a significant step toward conserving genetic diversity on a global scale. Sequencing advancements have broadened biodiversity studies by enabling the mapping of species distributions, increasing understanding of ecological interactions, and monitoring genetic diversity. However, these tools are hindered by inequalities and biases, particularly in biodiversity-rich develo...

María Mancilla García, Lena Bertemes Lalia, Marlino Mubai, Tilman Hertz, Elizabeth Maria Drury O’Neill, Caroline Abunge, Salomão Olinda Bandeira, François Bousquet, Christopher Cheupe, Dadivo José Combane, Tim Daw, Nyawira Muthiga, Halimu Shauri, Taís Sonetti González. 2025. A meaningful performative experience: using Forum Theatre as an ethical method in sustainability science. Sustainability Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-025-01699-3

Sustainability scientists have engaged in extensive discussions on ethical ways of doing research and argued on the importance of co-production approaches to counter knowledge extractivism. The specific issue of research fatigue, often associated with knowledge extractivism, and the possible methods to counter it, have however received less attention. This paper seeks to contribute to discussions on ethical ways of doing resea...

María Mancilla García, Örjan Bodin. 2025. The Imperative of New and Shiny Clothes: A Discussion on Novelty and Its Effects in Water Governance Research. Environmental Policy and Governance. https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.2167

Novelty is a requirement demanded from scholars by reviewers holding the keys to publication as well as by funding bodies allocating project funds and thus sometimes enabling the possibility of an academic career. In fields such as water governance research, at the intersection of research and practice, an additional pressure comes from practitioners' need to find solutions and resources to try and implement different solution...

Victor Galaz, Hannah Metzler, Caroline Schill, Therese Lindahl, Stefan Daume, Arvid Marklund, Antonio J. Castro, Jennifer Bard, Timon McPhearson, Diego Galafassi, Helge Peters. 2025. Artificial intelligence, digital social networks, and climate emotions. npj Climate Action. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-025-00225-6

Emotions relate to climate change action in various ways. Here we elaborate on how the expansion of digital social networks and advances in artificial intelligence, ranging from recommender systems to generative AI, may affect the way people perceive and engage emotionally on climate change. We develop a simple framework that links individual and collective emotions, AI, and climate action, and suggest three critical areas in ...

Johan Rockström, Jonathan F. Donges, Ingo Fetzer, Maria A. Martin, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Katherine Richardson. 2025. Publisher Correction: Planetary Boundaries guide humanity’s future on Earth. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-025-00696-5