The challenge of producing more food in times of climate change, degraded land and scares water resources is calling for a radical transformation of agriculture. Sustainable agricultural intensification is the process of increasing the productivity of farms while preserving functional ecosystems. A range of sustainable land and water management (SLWM) practices and approaches to sustainable intensification have been successfully implemented at the local scale during the last decades, but adoption rate remains low due to a variety of barriers and lack of effective approaches from authorities at larger scales (national to global). Despite the wealth of local successes, promoting and realizing the widespread uptake of SLWM requires large scale understanding of the potential and challenges of adoption of SLWM, which is currently lacking. This thesis bridges outcomes of successful implementation of SLWM from local cases to large scale social-ecological patterns, showing where and what is the potential of SLWM to contribute to sustainable agricultural intensification and the barriers to achieve it. The methodological approach and the results presented in this thesis aim at providing insights to improve current assessments of sustainable intensification of agriculture and practical guidance to planning, policy making and funding interventions to promote the widespread adoption of SLWM.