Sustainable development aims at addressing economic, social, and environmental concerns, but the current lack of responsive environmental governance hinders progress. Short-term economic development has led to limited actions, unsustainable resource management, and degraded ecosystems. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) may continue to fall short of achieving significant progress without a better understanding of how ecosystems contribute to achieving sustainability for all people. Ecosystem governance is an approach that integrates the social and ecological components for improved sustainability and includes principles such as adaptive ecosystem co-management, subsidiarity, and telecoupling framework, as well as principles of democracy and accountability. We explain the importance of ecosystem governance in achieving the SDGs, and suggest some ways to ensure that ecosystem services are meaningfully considered. This paper reflects on how integration of these approaches into policies can enhance the current agenda of sustainability.

The mutually beneficial relationships between improving animal welfare (AW) and achieving the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals (SDGs) were further explored and compared to previous work. This was done in the context of a doctoral training course where students selected at least six SDGs and reasoned around their impact on AW and vice versa. Then, students rated the strength of the SDG—AW links. Lastly, students engaged in an assessment exercise. Students reported an overall mutually beneficial relationship between AW and all SDGs, yet with significant differences in strength for SDGs 4, 11, 10, 12 and 13 to that previously found by experts. Students considered SDG 12: Responsible consumption and production the most promising way to integrate AW targets. This study further supports the positive role of AW in the success of the UN’s strategy. Still, the magnitude of the anticipated impacts is modified by stakeholder, context and experience.

The adaptive cycle and panarchy are recognised tools for resilience assessment prior to establishing new management approaches aligned with Anthropocene needs. This study used the adaptive cycle and panarchy to assess the dynamics of the social-ecological system (SES) of La Marjaleria, Spain, which experienced increasing human pressure and environmental degradation in recent decades, and developed the ‘adaptive curve’ as a novel graphical representation of system change in the presentation of the results. Based on a literature review of historical changes in La Marjaleria, a SES analysis was performed using the adaptive cycle and panarchy, following the Resilience Alliance’s Practitioners Guide. The assessment offered new insights into the social and ecological dynamics of La Marjaleria through identification of causes and consequences from a complex systems perspective. Previous land-use management in the area has generated tensions between different stakeholders and reduced environmental resilience. The systems thinking approach highlighted the complexity of change processes, offering the possibility of new routes for dialogue and understanding. The ‘adaptive curve’ developed as a method of illustrating interactions across scales in this study could be useful for synthesising the results of a panarchy analysis and supporting their interpretation, offering relevant departure points for future planning and decision-making.

The story of the Cornwall Beaver Project is presented as the foundation of a review of the literature to consider the effects of beavers on geomorphological and hydrological processes, habitats, biodiversity, and people in agricultural landscapes in the UK. The review includes a comparison of the principles for rewilding as an approach to ecological restoration with IUCNs principles for Nature-based Solutions together with a summary of beaver reintroduction in Europe, and the impacts of beavers on hydrological and geomorphological processes, biodiversity and the human-wildlife conflict that arises from reintroduction. We note that rewilding principles require a paradigm shift in the relationship between humans and the rest of nature and a corresponding application of systems thinking to research, practice and policy. The combination of experiential and formal knowledge is assessed using a social-ecological systems framework to consider the potential of beavers to mitigate climate change impacts on agricultural landscapes in the UK and how rewilders might navigate the social complexity of beaver reintroduction to achieve large scale system transformation. We discuss the different lines of evidence about the impacts of beavers on landscapes as viewed through a system lens and conclude that: (1) beaver dams have considerable potential to store water but their ability to reduce flood risk is difficult to assess because of the complex interactions between the material available for dam construction, geomorphology, and the duration, extent and intensity of rainfall events; (2) beaver dams, especially when combined with buffer zones along water courses have considerable potential to enhance the resilience of agricultural landscapes and support a shift from intensive to agroecological farming; (3) scaling beaver reintroduction will evolve with the application of policies and practices that enhance the ability of land users to adapt and learn how to coexist with beavers. Our review proposes a low conflict strategy for rewilding with beavers that includes changes from a policy of conflict avoidance to a proactive policy to support practices that apply the tools of social-ecological systems science to the body of knowledge about the interactions between beavers and their environment.