Effective implementation of Sustainable Land Management (SLM) remains a major challenge worldwide because of its weak integration within the domains of science, policy, and development practice. Based on global analyses of soil erosion risk and the degree of implementation of SLM research, policies, and practices at the country level, we propose a transdisciplinary framework to address soil erosion through SLM. In the analysis, we used indices of the policy–development, science–policy, and science–development interfaces to evaluate the overall science–policy–development interface (SPDI) in 236 countries. Over 190 countries (81%) were found to be currently facing moderate or high risk of increased soil erosion from two or more erosion processes, and 182 countries (77%) were found to have a SPDI level that was lower than their soil erosion risk implying the urgent need for a transdisciplinary framework that supports the implementation of future soil erosion research and development projects. Our proposed transdisciplinary framework comprises seven stages, starting from “shared research framing” and ending with “ex-post evaluation”. The framework’s practical application is discussed in the context of a recent project, emphasizing the need for country-specific studies to develop tailored frameworks.

Non-Technical summary Transdisciplinary sustainability scientists work with many different actors in pursuit of change. In so doing they make choices about why and how to engage with different perspectives in their research. Reflexivity-active individual and collective critical reflection-is considered an important capacity for researchers to address the resulting ethical and practical challenges. We developed a framework for reflexivity as a transformative capacity in sustainability science through a critical systems approach, which helps make any decisions that influence which perspectives are included or excluded in research explicit. We suggest that transdisciplinary sustainability research can become more transformative by nurturing reflexivity. Technical summary Transdisciplinary sustainability science is increasingly applied to study transformative change. Yet, transdisciplinary research involves diverse actors who hold contrasting and sometimes conflicting perspectives and worldviews. Reflexivity is cited as a crucial capacity for navigating the resulting challenges, yet notions of reflexivity are often focused on individual researcher reflections that lack explicit links to the collective transdisciplinary research process and predominant modes of inquiry in the field. This gap presents the risk that reflexivity remains on the periphery of sustainability science and becomes 'unreflexive', as crucial dimensions are left unacknowledged. Our objective was to establish a framework for reflexivity as a transformative capacity in sustainability science through a critical systems approach. We developed and refined the framework through a rapid scoping review of literature on transdisciplinarity, transformation, and reflexivity, and reflection on a scenario study in the Red River Basin (US, Canada). The framework characterizes reflexivity as the capacity to nurture a dynamic, embedded, and collective process of self-scrutiny and mutual learning in service of transformative change, which manifests through interacting boundary processes-boundary delineation, interaction, and transformation. The case study reflection suggests how embedding this framework in research can expose boundary processes that block transformation and nurture more reflexive and transformative research. Social media summary Transdisciplinary sustainability research may become more transformative by nurturing reflexivity as a dynamic, embedded, and collective learning process.

Indigenous peoples are increasingly entering conservation partnerships with non-Indigenous actors. While these partnerships can provide resources to assist in the care of ancestral homelands, a lack of appreciation for ontological difference can lead to the restriction of self-determination and harm Indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being. For conservation to succeed globally, it is vital to share practical approaches that can help to better recognize and negotiate ontological differences and promote genuinely pluralistic partnerships. In this paper we describe our decade-long experiment in working with ontological difference in Indigenous Land and Sea Management. We present ‘Balpara’ as an emerging approach to good-faith partnerships, while reflecting on benefits, challenges and limitations. Further, we offer key principles that have guided our pluriversal collaborations as inspiration for others interested in working generatively with ontological difference in Indigenous-led conservation.

Ambiguity is often recognized as an intrinsic aspect of addressing complex sustainability challenges. Nevertheless, in the practice of transdisciplinary sustainability research, ambiguity is often an ‘elephant in the room’ to be either side-stepped or reduced rather than explicitly mobilized in pursuit of solutions. These responses threaten the salience and legitimacy of sustainability science by masking the pluralism of real-world sustainability challenges and how research renders certain frames visible and invisible. Critical systems thinking (CST) emerged from the efforts of operational researchers to address theoretical and practical aspects of ambiguity. By adapting key concepts, frameworks, and lessons from CST literature and case studies, this paper aims to establish (1) an expansive conceptualization of ambiguity and (2) recommendations for operationalizing ambiguity as a valuable means of addressing sustainability challenges. We conceptualize ambiguity as an emergent feature of the simultaneous and interacting boundary processes associated with being, knowing, and intervening in complex systems, and propose Reflexive Boundary Critique (RBC) as a novel framework to help navigate these boundary processes. Our characterization of ambiguity acknowledges the boundary of a researcher’s subjective orientation and its influence on how ambiguity is exposed and mediated in research (being), characterizes knowledge as produced through the process of making boundary judgments, generating a partial, contextual, and provisional frame (knowing), and situates a researcher as part of the complexity they seek to understand, rendering any boundary process as a form of intervention that reinforces or marginalizes certain frames and, in turn, influences action (intervening). Our recommendations for sustainability scientists to operationalize ambiguity include (1) nurturing the reflexive capacities of transdisciplinary researchers to navigate persistent ambiguity (e.g., using our proposed framework of RBC), and (2) grappling with the potential for and consequences of theoretical incommensurability and discordant pluralism. Our findings can help sustainability scientists give shape to and embrace ambiguity as a fundamental part of rigorous sustainability science.

Transformations to sustainability require alternatives to the paradigms, practices, and policies that have generated social-ecological destruction and the Anthropocene. In sustainability science, several conceptual frameworks have been developed for transformations, including social-ecological, multi-level, transformative adaptation, and pathways approaches. There is a growing shift towards recognising transformations as ‘shared spaces’ involving multiple ways of knowing, being, and doing. Diverse relational approaches to transformations are increasingly articulated by Indigenous, humanities, and social science scholars, practitioners, and activists from the Global South and North. Broadly, relational approaches enact alternatives to separable categories of society and nature, emphasise unfolding relations between human and non-human beings, and highlight the importance of ethical responsibilities and care for these relationships. Yet while it is important to recognise the collective significance of diverse relational lifeways, practices, and philosophies to transformations, it is also vital to recognise their differences: efforts to produce universal frameworks and toolboxes for applying relationality can reproduce modernist-colonialist knowledge practices, hinder recognition of the significance of relational approaches, and marginalise more radical approaches. In this paper we explore five intersecting ‘relationalities’ currently contributing to discussions around transformations: (i) Indigenous-kinship, (ii) systemic-analytical, (iii) posthumanist-performative, (iv) structural-metabolic, and (v) Latin American-postdevelopment. We explore how these different relational approaches address key concepts in transformations research, including human-nature connectedness; agency and leadership; scale and scaling; time and change; and knowledge and action. We suggest that their diversity gives rise to practices of transformations as ‘walking together in a world of many worlds’ and support intercultural dialogue on sustainability transformations.

Science-Based Targets (SBTs) are being developed for companies to contribute to global sustainability goals, including for ‘nature’. The literature has not yet explored multiple understandings of SBTs. We adopt an interpretive approach, using Q methodology to explore framings of SBTs amongst 22 scientists and practitioners engaged in SBT development. Results show two distinct framings: ‘we need science-based targets to help economic systems move towards global sustainability’ and ‘the system itself is unsustainable and needs to change – science-based targets can help’, with areas of agreement and disagreement. They lean towards reformist or radical discourse, at times weaving them together. What kinds of ‘transformation’, if any, are SBTs capable of driving? Conceptualising SBTs as a boundary object, we suggest that sustainability transformations involve paradoxical tensions, including where actors appeal to the powerful to drive change, but this inhibits the most radical discourses. We conclude with potential implications for sustainability science and governance.

As Indigenous Land and Sea Management has grown in scope and scale, there has been increasing focus on monitoring and evaluation to foster learning, strengthen accountability and report on outcomes. A resurgence in Indigenous governance has led to recognition that Indigenous knowledge, law and governance systems are essential to successful conservation initiatives on Indigenous lands. Indigenous-led monitoring and evaluation involves Indigenous Peoples exercising control, direction and informed decisions about monitoring and evaluation practices and signals a greater role for Indigenous methodologies alongside participatory approaches and Western sciences. This Article describes the Intercultural Monitoring and Evaluation Project, led by the Arafura Swamp Rangers Aboriginal Corporation in partnership with Bi and Yolŋu Traditional Owners and clans and non-Indigenous practitioners and researchers. The Intercultural Monitoring and Evaluation Project aimed to co-produce an Indigenous-led and Country-based monitoring and evaluation system for Arafura Swamp Rangers Aboriginal Corporation's Healthy Country Plan. The Intercultural Monitoring and Evaluation Project recognised that the Rangers from the Arafura Swamp Rangers Aboriginal Corporation are accountable within Bi, Yolŋu and Western governance systems and that monitoring and evaluation at Arafura Swamp Rangers Aboriginal Corporation needed to strengthen relationships between all three. The Intercultural Monitoring and Evaluation Project involved: (i) developing understandings of monitoring and evaluation in Bi, Yolŋu and Western knowledge systems, (ii) generating organisational roadmaps, targets and indicators, (iii) developing Bi, Yolŋu and Western monitoring methods, (iv) building a data management system and seasonal monitoring calendar, (v) initiating a monitoring and evaluation committee to inform Arafura Swamp Rangers Aboriginal Corporation's strategic decision-making and (vi) sharing the story of the project with others. This approach embedded monitoring and evaluation in Indigenous law and governance, oral knowledge traditions and the intergenerational kinship relationships that sustain people and Country, while also connecting to Western adaptive management frameworks. Indigenous-led approaches can integrate monitoring and evaluation with Indigenous practices of caring for Country, contributing directly to the multiple ecological, cultural and socio-economic goals of Indigenous Land and Sea Management.

Since antiquity, philosophers in the Western tradition of virtue ethics have declared practical wisdom to be the central virtue of citizens involved in public and social life. Practical wisdom is of particular importance when values are conflicting, power is unequal and knowledge uncertain. We propose that practical wisdom and virtue ethics can inform the practice of sustainability researchers by strengthening their capacity to engage with the normative complexities of knowledge co-production when aspiring to contribute to transformative change. 

Methods are often thought of as neutral tools that researchers can pick up and use to learn about a reality 'out there.' Motivated by growing recognition of complexity, there have been widespread calls to mix methods, both within and across disciplines, to generate richer scientific understandings and more effective policy interventions. However, bringing methods together often reveals their tacit, inherently contestable, and sometimes directly opposing assumptions about reality and how it can and should be known. There are consequently growing efforts to identify the competencies necessary to work with multiple methods effectively. We identify the ability to recognise and negotiate the ethical-political dimensions of research methods as a key competency in mixed methods, inter- and transdisciplinary, and co-production research, particularly for researchers addressing societal challenges in fields like environment, health and education. We describe these ethical-political dimensions by drawing on our experiences developing an ethics application for a transdisciplinary sustainability science project that brings together the photovoice method and controlled behavioural experiments. The first dimension is that different methods and methodological approaches generate their own ethical standards guiding interactions between researchers and participants that may contradict each other. The second is that these differing ethical standards are directly linked to the variable effects that methods have in wider society (both in terms of their enactment in the moment and the knowledge generated), raising more political questions about the kinds of realities that researchers are contributing to through their chosen methods. We identify the practices that helped us-as two researchers using different methodological approaches-to productively explore these dimensions and enrich our collaborative work. We conclude with pointers for evaluating the ethical-political rigour of mixed methods, inter- and transdisciplinary, and co-production research, and discuss how such rigour might be supported in research projects, graduate training programmes and research organisations.

Measuring, reporting and forecasting research impact beyond academia has become increasingly important to demonstrate and understand real-world benefits. This is arguably most important in crisis disciplines such as medicine, environmental sustainability and biodiversity conservation, where application of new knowledge is urgently needed to improve health and environmental outcomes. Increasing focus on impact has prompted the development of theoretical guidance and practical tools tailored to a range of disciplines, but commensurate development of tools for conservation is still needed. In the present article, we review available tools for evaluating research impact applicable to conservation research. From these, and via a survey of conservation professionals, we compiled and ranked a list of 96 impact indicators useful for conservation science. Our indicators apply to a logic chain of inputs, processes, outputs, outcomes, and impacts. We suggest the list can act as a clear guide to realize and measure potential impacts from conservation research within and beyond academia.