Transformations towards sustainability are needed to address many of the earth’s profound environmental and social challenges. Yet, actions taken to deliberately shift social–ecological systems towards more sustainable trajectories can have substantial social impacts and exclude people from decision-making processes. The concept of just transformations makes explicit a need to consider social justice in the process of shifting towards sustainability. In this paper, we draw on the transformations, just transitions, and social justice literature to advance a pragmatic framing of just transformations that includes recognitional, procedural and distributional considerations. Decision-making processes to guide just transformations need to consider these three factors before, during and after the transformation period. We offer practical and methodological guidance to help navigate just transformations in environmental management and sustainability policies and practice. The framing of just transformations put forward here might be used to inform decision making in numerous marine and terrestrial ecosystems, in rural and urban environments, and at various scales from local to global. We argue that sustainability transformations cannot be considered a success unless social justice is a central concern.

The majority of vulnerability and adaptation scholarship, policies and programs focus exclusively on climate change or global environmental change. Yet, individuals, communities and sectors experience a broad array of multi-scalar and multi-temporal, social, political, economic and environmental changes to which they are vulnerable and must adapt. While extensive theoretical—and increasingly empirical—work suggests the need to explore multiple exposures, a clear conceptual framework which would facilitate analysis of vulnerability and adaptation to multiple interacting socioeconomic and biophysical changes is lacking. This review and synthesis paper aims to fill this gap through presenting a conceptual framework for integrating multiple exposures into vulnerability analysis and adaptation planning. To support applications of the framework and facilitate assessments and comparative analyses of community vulnerability, we develop a comprehensive typology of drivers and exposures experienced by coastal communities. Our results reveal essential elements of a pragmatic approach for local-scale vulnerability analysis and for planning appropriate adaptations within the context of multiple interacting exposures. We also identify methodologies for characterizing exposures and impacts, exploring interactions and identifying and prioritizing responses. This review focuses on coastal communities; however, we believe the framework, typology and approach will be useful for understanding vulnerability and planning adaptation to multiple exposures in various social-ecological contexts.

Whitney, C. K., N. J. Bennett, N. C. Ban, E. H. Allison, D. Armitage, J. L. Blythe, J. M. Burt, W. Cheung, E. M. Finkbeiner, M. Kaplan-Hallam, I. Perry, N. J. Turner, and L. Yumagulova. 2017. Adaptive capacity: from assessment to action in coastal social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society 22(2):22. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09325-220222

Significance: Effective environmental policy requires public participation in management, typically achieved through engaging community defined by residential location or resource use. However, current social and environmental change, particularly increasing connectedness, demands new approaches to community. We draw on place attachment theory to redefine community in the context of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Using a large dataset on place attachment, our analysis of local, national, and international stakeholders identified four communities differing in their attachment to the reef and spanning location and use communities. Our results suggest that place attachment can bridge geographic and social boundaries, and communities of attachment could thus be leveraged to foster transnational stewardship, which is crucial to addressing modern sustainability challenges in our globalized world.