Traditionally, autonomy has been perceived through the lens of individualism and internalism, a view increasingly challenged by contemporary philosophical approaches, as well as by the context of global sustainability. Environmental challenges underline the need to shift from Earth-imposed limits to social-ecological limitations to achieve autonomy, democracy, and sustainability. In the realm of sustainability sciences, the concept of social-ecological systems has been developed to explore the interdependencies between humans and their environments. Despite the significance of autonomy in discussions around sustainability, its exploration within this field remains limited. This chapter aims to discuss the potential contribution of the concept of outonomy for social-ecological systems and the planetary scale and, conversely, to open up the concept of autonomy to planetary-ecological dependencies.

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 research by focusing on our experience of using theatre, specifically, Forum Theatre, to investigate divergent perceptions of environmental change and related tensions among selected coastal communities in Kenya and Mozambique. We argue that Forum Theatre constitutes an ethical method for sustainability scientists for four reasons: (i) it allows to co-produce knowledge with participants; (ii) it facilitates horizontal exchange; (iii) it creates joyful moments; and (iv) it enables the transmission of skills that remain with participants beyond project durations. The paper engages with these four themes, first theoretically and then proposing a reflection based on our project experience. In the last section, we warn against some of the limitations of the approach.

1. This study examines sustainable development from the cosmovisions of Indigenous Peoples and other Traditional Communities (IoTCs) in western Bahia, a region in the Brazilian savanna of the Cerrado. It adopts a feminist decolonial and post-development approach to address issues of epistemic violence.
2. Employing participatory arts-based research, this study incorporates poetic and thematic co-analysis using participant-voiced poetry. This approach centres on community voices and contextual narratives of co-production, as well as the presentation of findings.
3. Our analysis shows that their understanding of sustainability is deeply rooted in cultural identity, spirituality and traditional practices such as family farming and artisanal fishing. These practices highlight their relational and community-oriented ways of living, deeply entangled with nature.
4. While the communities recognised the strategic value of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) for communicating their practices to a global audience, they found the framework insufficient in capturing the relational and context-specific dimensions central to their understanding of sustainability. This suggests the need for a reinterpretation of the SDGs.
5. This study introduces a new use of decolonial analyses to highlight the limitations of applying global, linear development models to diverse local contexts, using the case of the SDGs. It advocates for policies that recognise the pluriversal nature of sustainability, actively include marginalised perspectives and critically challenge epistemic hegemony.
6. By advocating for a re-inhabitation of the SDGs, this research highlights the importance of integrating relational and context-specific understandings of sustainability, ensuring that global frameworks respect and embrace diverse cosmovisions and practices.

Net-Map, an interview-based network mapping tool, has been applied across various scientific fields and purposes since its inception to study networks of influence. In this article, we first review the general uses and limitations of Net-Map and then share experiential knowledge gained from using Net-Map to develop an action-oriented research process focused on envisioning pathways to sustainable futures in Spanish drylands. Drawing from the literature and reflecting on our experience, we identified four practical contributions of Net-Map that support our action-oriented research process, including: 1) creating socially inclusive participatory spaces that capture a diversity of influential capacities for promoting sustainability transformations, 2) understanding how to articulate transformative changes at multiple scales, 3) anticipating conflicts and managing power imbalances across scales, and 4) building shared agency and capabilities for fostering collective action, while respecting differences between participants’ perspectives. This paper argues how Net-Map can help overcome common barriers in action-oriented research.

This paper examines transformations in social-ecological system through the process-relational perspective (PRP), using the concepts of the “real-possible,” the existing reality, and the “actual-virtual” potentials that exist beyond current hegemonic thinking and practices—framed within the Latin American feminist concept of Nepantla, which refers to a liminal space of transition, ambiguity, and transformation where multiple perspectives, identities, or worldviews intersect. Focusing on Western Bahia in the Cerrado, Brazil’s critical agricultural frontier facing intense sustainability challenges, this study underscores the importance of recognizing and integrating coexistent realities to enhance sustainability efforts. Over six months of fieldwork in the region, interacting and living with local actors, Indigenous Peoples and Traditional Communities, our research utilized the PRP approach, offering deep insights into the perspectives and experiences of diverse actors in Western Bahia. This strategy highlighted that the production of phenomena is the result of a simultaneous entanglement between the researcher, the researched, the context, the script, the data, and the process of conducting participatory action research. Furthermore, this study highlights the often-overlooked spiritual dimension vital for Indigenous Peoples and Traditional Communities, as it deeply shapes their ways of life and perspectives on sustainability. By engaging with relational ontologies, we contribute to the conceptualization of transformations as ongoing, performative, and continuously unfolding processes. Moreover, we highlight the novelty of our research by advancing relational methodologies that honor liminality as a generative space —where multiple worldviews coexist, collide, and compost into new possibilities. We argue that embracing ontological plurality is essential for nurturing radical transformations in contested places like Western Bahia.

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 solutions for new and ongoing management problems. Academics find themselves spending a significant amount of time and effort presenting their results and contributions as novel findings, neglecting the importance of testing and refining existing theories (new or old) as a constitutive part of advancing the field. As a result, we observe a mushrooming of concepts and perspectives presented as novel and sometimes even as a new paradigm when such labels might not always be warranted. Through this commentary, we intend to discuss what role novelty plays in water governance research, including discussing if and to what extent such framing hinders knowledge cumulation. To substantiate our discussion, we interviewed four scholars with more than 30 years of experience in water governance research on their views about novelty and on whether striving for novelty impacts the scientific endeavor of knowledge cumulation. We also offer a reflection on possible ways forward to support an academic culture where the importance of testing theory and better utilization of previous work are given more attention.

Mitigating wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVC) is crucial for reducing roadkill and preserving biodiversity. This study identifies barriers to WVC mitigation and proposes solutions through an exploratory literature review and formal expert elicitation. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 17 WVC specialists from diverse regions of Brazil, coding 10 key barriers and achieving consensus on 22 solutions. The barriers identified encompass a range of economic, social, political, and technical factors, including road manager type, lack of public policy, and limited societal awareness. The BR-262 highway case study further contextualizes our findings, illustrating how these barriers manifest in real-world scenarios. Co-created strategies with stakeholders emerged as the most effective, with high levels of agreement among specialists. Our results underscore that unaddressed barriers limit the effectiveness of mitigation measures, stressing the need for collaborative approaches that integrate public policy, community engagement, and technical innovation to overcome these challenges.

Social-ecological systems increasingly face polarization dynamics that challenge environmental governance. Such polarization implies the development of opposing narratives with limited interaction, each framing environmental problems and solutions in distinct ways. In this study, we analyze a case of narrative polarization around the eutrophication crises of the Mar Menor lagoon in Spain, focusing on how proposed solutions are narrated to address this complex environmental puzzle. We use a mixed-method approach that combines social network analysis and an analysis of narrative practices in interview situations, to investigate whether and how potential solutions to eutrophication in the Mar Menor can be understood as bridging spaces that create opportunities for interaction between divergent societal narratives. Our three-step analysis includes: (a) a network analysis of reports proposing solutions to identify solutions with a bridging role (i.e., those linking reports that otherwise have little overlap in the solutions proposed); (b) a thematic narrative analysis to investigate the solutions proposed by diverse actors; and (c) an analysis of narrative practices around selected bridging solutions to explore if they constitute new spaces where narratives can interact and confront positions - what we call bridging spaces. We suggest this mixed methods approach allows for the identification of potential bridging spaces to mediate polarization and outline directions for future research on both the case study specifically, and on polarization in environmental governance more generally.

As sustainability scientists increasingly put forward the relevance of process-relational approaches to make sense of social-ecological phenomena, an inquiry on which methods would fit a process-relational approach is necessary. This paper discusses how a process-relational approach can be applied to traditional qualitative research methods, namely interviews and coding and the tensions associated with it. Process-relational perspectives share commonalities with interpretative approaches but also present specific characteristics, such as the importance of material aspects and the understanding of the phenomenon as a moment in which different elements become defined respective to each other. The paper uses data and researchers' experiences from an action research project seeking to support collective action among coastal communities affected by environmental changes in Kenya and Mozambique. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Ecosystem services (ES) have gained significant attention in recent years from the global environmental initiatives that involve science and policy. Multiple scholars have analyzed how ES are integrated with environmental policies, plans, and strategic assessments. However, there is a lack of information on how countries translate these policies, plans and assessments into concrete environmental management actions that integrate an explicit ES approach. To help fill this gap, we analyze how the Colombian Regional Autonomous Corporations (CARs) have used the ES approach in their environmental management projects implemented between 2004 and 2015. This study aims to analyze the type and diversity of ES managed by the CARs, as well as the synergies, trade-offs, and bundles of ES prioritized by them. We used content analysis of the CARs reports and statistical analysis to explore whether CARs explicitly use the ES concept. Our results showed that provisioning, regulating, and cultural ES were similarly prioritized by the CARs, however, explicit mention of ES was limited. Regulating services showed remarkable potential for synergies, and there was a pattern of trade-offs between cultural and some regulating and provisioning services. We found three bundles of ES: Restoration and conservation of agrosystems, Mosaic of services and Farming and fibers occupying, respectively, 9, 36 and 55% of the total area of Colombia. Our findings show that multiple ES are targeted and affected by environmental management actions. The contribution of this study has the potential to inform adequately policy decisions to be used in environmental management and planning practices to prioritize areas for maximizing ES provision.