This paper rethinks the governance of genebanks in a social and political context that has significantly evolved since their establishment. The theoretical basis for the paper is the commons conceptual framework in relation to both seed and plant genetic resources. This framework is applied to question the current policy ecosystem of genetic research and breeding and explore different collective governance models. The concept of crop diversity management system (CDMS) commons is proposed as the new foundation for a more holistic and inclusive framework for crop diversity management, that covers a broad range of concerns and requires different actors. The paper presents a multi-stakeholder process established within the context of the two recent projects CoEx and Dynaversity, imagining possible collective arrangements to overcome existing deadlocks, foster collective learning, and design collaborative relationships among genebanks, researchers, and farmers’ civil society organizations involved in crop diversity management.

Covering 55% of Canada’s total surface area and stretching from coast to coast to coast, the Canadian boreal zone is crucial to the nation’s economic and ecological integrity. Although often viewed as relatively underdeveloped, it is vulnerable to numerous stressors such as mining, forestry, and anthropogenic climate change. Natural archives preserved in lake sediments can provide key insights by quantifying pre-disturbance conditions (pre-1850 CE) and the nature, magnitude, direction, and speed of environmental change induced by anthropogenic stressors over the past ∼150 years. Here, we paired a review of paleolimnological literature of the Canadian boreal zone with analyses of published sediment core data to highlight the effects of climate change, catchment disturbances, and atmospheric deposition on boreal lakes. Specifically, we conducted quantitative syntheses of two lake health indicators: elemental lead (Pb) and chlorophyll a. Segmented regressions and Mann–Kendall trend analysis revealed a generally increasing trend in elemental Pb across the boreal zone until ∼1970 CE, followed by a generally decreasing trend to the present. Snapshot comparisons of sedimentary chlorophyll a from recent and pre-industrial sediments (i.e., top-bottom sediment core design) revealed that a majority of sites have increased over time, suggesting a general enhancement in lake primary production across the boreal zone. Collectively, this body of work demonstrates that long-term sediment records offer a critical perspective on ecosystem change not accessible through routine monitoring programs. We advocate using modern datasets in tandem with paleolimnology to establish baseline conditions, measure ecosystem changes, and set meaningful management targets.

Climate change is reshaping freshwater ecosystems worldwide, yet the extent to which its effects differ across trophic levels remains poorly understood. Despite growing evidence of community restructuring, few studies have jointly examined how multiple trophic levels respond to climate forcing within a functional and network‐based framework. Herein, we assessed how fish and zooplankton communities respond to contemporary and projected end‐of‐century climate conditions using different shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP1‐2.6, SSP3‐7.0, and SSP5‐8.5). By means of joint species distribution models and ecological network analyses, we examined fish–zooplankton co‐responses to environmental gradients, quantified trait–environment relationships, and evaluated potential species interactions. We found that fish and zooplankton displayed distinct community and functional responses to current and projected climate gradients. Although both trophic levels were primarily influenced by climatic variables, fish exhibited stronger trait–climate relationships, including declining body size and increasing thermal tolerance with warming. Through ecological network analyses, we then demonstrated that freshwater communities tended to become more homogenized by 2100 under future climate change. Together, these results suggest contrasting climate sensitivities across trophic levels, potentially leading to trophic decoupling and functional reorganization of freshwater food webs at the regional scale. Our study highlights the value of combining trait‐based and network approaches to better anticipate community‐level responses to climate change.

Establishing linkage among data of diverse domains (e.g. biological, environmental, socio-economical, and geographical) is critical to address complex multidimensional issues such as food security or sustainable agriculture. The complexity of this challenge increases with the level of heterogeneity of the data but also with the social context of production of datasets, a dimension usually less considered. Building on the experience of a transdisciplinary project on the diversity of crop diversity management systems in West Africa (CoEx), this chapter reflects on the importance to better account for agency for more meaningful, responsible and efficient plant data linkage. The chapter addresses sequentially the cognitive and political challenges related to data work and the way they could be addressed simultaneously within the same social unit. To do this, we rely on the concept of community of practice (CoP) which gained enormous popularity in relation to data and knowledge management. More than simply a social mechanism for community knowledge management, we show in this contribution that CoP needs to be approached as a social experiment and a terrain of collective situated learning in order to address each challenge and their linkages with respect to data work.