Joern Fischer

1. Agricultural landscapes face increasing pressure to balance diverse social, economic, and ecological objectives. Human activities have transformed nearly one-third of the world’s terrestrial lan...

Globally, landscapes are rapidly degrading due to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and soil erosion, affecting nearly one-quarter of the terrestrial area and more than one-third of the global popu...

Both resilience and regeneration are relevant concepts in sustainability science. Resilience thinking has led to improved understanding of cross-scale cycles of growth and renewal, regime shifts, and planetary boundaries. Regeneration highlights the role of positive, place-based and partially self-perpetuating social-ecological dynamics and seeks to foster mutualistic relationships between human and more-than-human entities. This paper lays out similarities, differences and overlaps between work on resilience and regeneration. The concept of regeneration emerged both independently of resilience as well as playing a role within resilience scholarship. We show that the literatures on resilience and regeneration have elaborated complementary ideas and can be combined to derive guidance for improved governance of social-ecological systems. Because of its explicit and proactive future-orientation, the concept of regeneration could help boost nascent efforts to enact biosphere stewardship and develop positive visions for how to re-build a world that is dominated by regenerative rather than degenerative dynamics.

Place-based social-ecological systems research provides major opportunities to advance sustainability and often involves large, interdisciplinary groups. Researchers adopt various methodologies when studying landscapes, gathering a wide array of data such as socioeconomic information from households, ecological data from specific areas, and qualitative insights from interviews. To integrate these varied methods, we propose identifying social-ecological research units as shared anchor points for data collection across teams. We outline four design principles: (i) spatial scale of social-ecological units, (ii) key social-ecological gradients in the study area, (iii) accessibility of stratification data, and (iv) flexibility in response to logistical challenges. We applied these principles to design a social-ecological study on ecosystem restoration in western Rwanda. We identified five distinct and spatially homogenous clusters, from which we sampled a total of 152 villages (~9.5% of all villages in our study area), which will be visited by different researchers within our study consortium, hence enabling to identify cross-sectional similarities and differences. Through our stratification according to these principles, we created a framework to guide interdisciplinary collaboration. This structured approach supports integration of diverse research efforts and offers insights for advancing place-based social-ecological systems research globally. Sharing our stratification data and methodology, we highlight its potential applicability to other landscapes and sustainability challenges.

Introduction: Bending the biodiversity curve and meeting international commitments like the Kunming‐Montreal Agreement and the EU Nature Restoration Law require scaling up ecological restoration across spatial, temporal, and societal dimensions. Achieving this depends on a strong scientific evidence base and synthesis of effective practices from both ecological and social perspectives.Objectives: The Grassworks project investigates factors influencing grassland restoration success in Germany by integrating ecological, socioeconomic, and social‐ecological perspectives.Methods: We assessed previously restored grasslands across three regions along a north–south gradient in Germany, comparing them to reference sites. A stratified design evaluated restoration outcomes based on methods, past land use, management, governance, finance, and time since intervention. We analyzed vegetation, pollinators, soil, and economic performance while considering landscape configuration. Social‐ecological aspects, including stakeholder values, knowledge exchange, and decision‐making networks, were also examined. A Real‐World Laboratory approach integrated ex ante and ex post evaluations, demonstration sites, and co‐created restoration activities.Results: We propose a replicable, adaptable framework for social‐ecological restoration, synthesizing key ecological, economic, and social dimensions to support continuous learning and adaptive management, facilitating more effective and scalable restoration practices.Conclusions: Drawing from the Grassworks project, this research provides insights to inform and guide future large‐scale restoration efforts, promoting a holistic and evidence‐based approach to social‐ecological restoration worldwide.

Ecosystem restoration is widely recognized as a key strategy to address social-ecological challenges. National governments have pledged to restore millions of hectares of land. However, the ability to accomplish these pledges remains opaque, because restoration efforts are influenced by complex social-ecological factors. We provide a global analysis of national-level enabling and hindering conditions and their relation to restoration pledges undertaken by different nations. We developed an archetype characterization of within-country conditions using biophysical, socio-economic and governance indicators. Additionally, we investigated between-country conditions by examining flows of embodied land. Our analysis suggests that the countries with the most ambitious restoration pledges also tend to have the weakest enabling conditions (and vice versa). These results highlight the need to account for social, economic and governance factors alongside biophysical factors when considering where restoration ought to take place.