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Addressing the global biodiversity crisis requires conservation engagement across generations. However, generational amnesia and extinction of experience probably threaten this effort, reflecting declines in nature knowledge, experience and engagement among younger generations. We examined urban green area visit frequency, nature-relatedness, identification skills and familiarity with species (plants, birds and butterflies) and pro-conservation behaviour intentions in adolescents (15-17 years, mean = 15.97), young adults (18-29 years, mean = 23.72) and older adults (> 30 years, mean = 40.54) in Germany. With a path analysis, we explored relationships between concepts across all age groups. Although all age groups visited green areas similarly, identification skills, nature-relatedness and intentions declined progressively from older to younger groups. Nature-relatedness predicted intentions and identification skills predicted nature-relatedness across all groups. Our findings support the importance of fostering nature-relatedness and species knowledge through age-sensitive access to urban green areas with opportunities to connect with and learn about nature.

Ecosystem service (ES) trade-offs are central to informed decision-making, often requiring the prioritization of some ES over others. This comprehensive review synthesizes insights from over 3000 studies, identifying global patterns and research gaps across terrestrial, marine, and freshwater ecosystems. We highlight significant biases, including a predominant focus on terrestrial ecosystems and provisioning and habitat services, while cultural ES remain critically underrepresented. Regulating ES exhibit notable gaps in marine and freshwater contexts. Research is concentrated in Europe, Asia, and North America, whereas Africa exhibits a more balanced ES approach but remains underrepresented. A key insight is the limited integration of multiple ES categories, with most studies focusing on individual or paired services. Our dataset identifies underrepresented regions and emphasizes the need for region-specific approaches, particularly in marine and freshwater ecosystems. We advocate for interdisciplinary research, methodological transparency, and decision-support frameworks to bridge research gaps and foster equitable ES management.

There is a gap in understanding how different policies affect climate vulnerability and risk development, yet increasingly response is added to the risk framework. We propose a conceptual framework that explains how response and other policies affect risk determinants and demonstrate the application of the framework using a synthesis of empirical literature on climate-related health risks and adaptation in cities. The analysis shows that most of the policies affecting vulnerability and exposure are outside climate interventions, i.e., current conceptualization of response. The inclusion of response and other policies in risk assessments has implications for adaptation research and practice.

Climate policies are challenged around the world, a development coinciding with the backlash of globalisation. The emergence of the modern welfare state, however, indicates that similar tensions may give rise to transformative change, if coinciding interests for change develop. This article explores the case of Sweden, critical due to its longstanding role as an environmental frontrunner, now experiencing climate policy rollback. Based on 31 in-depth interviews, we analyse perceptions on a just transformation among business, trade union and civil society actors. The analysis reveals new and coinciding interests, driven by desire to restore climate leadership, and includes financial reform, more active state interventions and new policy tools to ensure public legitimacy. Views diverge on the depth of a just transformation, and power relations are different compared to the emergence of the welfare state. Nevertheless, a green Swedish model can be discerned, forging enhanced climate mitigation and renewed welfare state arrangements.

Economic sectors that drive nature decline are heavily subsidized and produce large environmental externalities. Calls are increasing to reform or eliminate subsidies and internalize the environmental costs of these sectors. We compile data on subsidies and externalities across six sectors driving biodiversity loss-agriculture, fossil fuels, forestry, infrastructure, fisheries and aquaculture, and mining. The most updated estimates suggest that subsidies to these sectors total between US$1.7 and US$3.2 trillion annually, while environmental externalities range between US$10.5 and US$22.6 trillion annually. Moreover, data gaps suggest that these figures underestimate the global magnitude of subsidies and externalities. We discuss the need and opportunities of building a baseline to account for the costs of subsidies and externalities of economic activities driving nature decline. A better understanding of the complexity, size, design, and effects of subsidies and externalities of such economic sectors could facilitate and expedite discussions to strengthen multilateral rules for their reform.

To respond to global sustainability challenges with transformative solutions, there is a need to pinpoint the necessary and sufficient conditions that enhance the transformative potential of sustainability innovations. To this end, we examined 129 sustainability innovations in two European Biosphere Reserves, and analysed (1) their transformative potential, assessed based on a leverage points perspective, and (2) their supportive conditions (i.e. decision contexts, or constellations of values, rules and knowledge). Specifically, we used social network analyses to characterise different rules, or governance arrangements in the two Biosphere Reserves. By comparing the decision contexts of transformative and incremental innovations, we provide empirical evidence that plural values, coproduction and networks that are diverse, collaborative and influential, enable transformative innovations. Shallow leverage points seem insufficient but necessary to operationalise transformative change. Future research should explore the co-evolution of decision contexts and transformative potential, to better understand how to shift incremental to transformative innovations.

To reverse biodiversity loss, creating resilient ecological networks has been promoted in policy and practice. However, we argue that emphasising networks within policy without clear conservation prioritisations may direct focus away from ecological processes important for population persistence. We studied the rationale for resilient ecological networks represented in a policy context, by reviewing research related to biodiversity within the concept of green infrastructure in European policy. We compared this outcome with underlying empirical evidence for effects of landscape properties on ecological processes relevant to population persistence. We show that interventions within green infrastructure research partly diverge from evidence of efficient conservation derived from empirical studies, likely linked to an insufficient acknowledgement of ecological processes determining long-term conservation of populations in GI policy and research. We discuss possible implications for biodiversity conservation and argue for upcoming policies to better integrate scientific evidence and underlying ecological processes to improve biodiversity outcomes.

Effective watershed management is essential for biodiversity conservation and mitigating environmental impacts like deforestation and ecosystem disruptions, especially in the context of climate change. The Tocantins/Araguaia Basin (TOAR), Brazil's second-largest watershed, faces significant challenges due to unsustainable land use practices. To address this, we modeled future land use and cover changes (2015-2045) using the CLUE model under three scenarios: Business-as-usual (BAUS), Conservation-based (CONS), and Production-based (PROD). Key drivers included soil type, average temperature, and yearly precipitation. Projections indicate persistent deforestation and habitat fragmentation, particularly under PROD, while CONS still projects notable losses in forests, savannas, and grasslands. These results highlight the urgent need for proactive conservation measures, stricter environmental regulations, and sustainable land use planning to protect TOAR's ecosystems and biodiversity. Addressing these issues is critical for preserving this vulnerable and understudied region amidst growing environmental pressures.

Planned retreat is an increasingly common climate adaptation approach. Whilst effective at reducing exposure to unacceptable risks, it is subject to significant resistance. In response, research has focussed on risk, governance and justice, but there has been less attention on spatial perspectives, including how spaces are reconfigured and the resultant land-seascape legacies. We identify 161 cases of planned retreat and develop a typology to analyse land use change in origin sites worldwide. In many cases, we find land transfer from private to public ownership, and restoration of land and environmental relations, to a complete failure to consider spatial legacies. The research stresses the importance of moving beyond planned retreat as risk management to consider longer-term spatial relations. Consequently, we argue, the definition and practice of 'planned retreat' must include early planning for the values, uses and reconfigurations of origin sites, extending the bounds of reimagination beyond 'retreat' and beyond the site.

The academic discourse on rewilding has primarily focused on its ecological dimensions, yet rewilding initiatives also have the potential to combine ecological restoration with regional economic development and societal well-being. Using a discrete choice experiment, this study investigates public preferences and willingness to pay for rewilded landscapes in the Oder Delta and the underlying motivations that influence these preferences. The findings show a general willingness to support a holistic rewilding approach among the local population of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. However, the results also highlight heterogeneous preferences with respect to different aspects of rewilding as well as underlying motivations. By providing insights into local preferences for rewilded landscapes, this research contributes to informing local rewilding initiatives and overarching conservation policies. It emphasises the importance of navigating trade-offs and conflicts inherent in rewilding projects and land use while emphasising the need for further research on the determinants of preferences and willingness to pay.