For decades, social scientists and activists have advocated for equal participation of citizens in decision-making about development and equitable futures. The urgency of this call has intensified with the climate emergency, pushing communities towards resilience. Yet, the concept of participation remains contested. This systematic review examines 187 articles to understand how participatory processes in climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience initiatives engage with power dynamics. Findings are categorised into three themes: domination and exclusion, negotiation and contestation, and transformation and emancipation. Results reveal that most participatory approaches sustain power imbalances and exclude marginalised groups, hindering meaningful engagement. However, some cases highlight transformative practices that foster empowerment, shared decision-making, and inclusivity. These examples offer pathways to rethink participatory climate action by emphasising power redistribution and community leadership. Future climate initiatives must prioritise these transformative dimensions to disrupt entrenched inequalities and achieve just and resilient outcomes.

Mahmoud, Y., A. Jerneck, A. Kronsell, and K. Steen. 2018. At the nexus of problem-solving and critical research. Ecology and Society 23(4):40. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10458-230440

Love, as an emotion, binds people together in social practices that are contingent on culture, historical processes, and social trends. As such, love is a perfect site to study how people interact and to understand how power, equality, and sustainability play out in human relations. Despite its importance and much attention, love as a concept and form of interaction is not fully understood, especially not across cultures. In our research, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, we show that alongside other emotions, love matters not only for passion in life or for wellbeing but also for improved resource use, increased gender equality, and, subsequently, higher food security and sovereignty – all signs of sustainability. While love is understood as a universal human phenomenon, definitions and expressions of love vary across time and cultures. Since love drives human interaction in many intertwined ways there is no single best way to define it. Yet, scholars have advanced the theory of love by identifying at least 40 major distinct but interdependent ‘love constructs’ fitting into the four main dimensions of affection, closeness, compassion, and commitment (Karandashev et al. 2022). In parallel to this and based on our review of the scholarship of love in a subset of 45 relevant academic articles from an 80-article systematic literature search of ‘love’ we find four core (and partly overlapping) types of how to speak about love as an expression and experience. These include: 1/ contextual love influenced by culture, space, and time; 2/ romantic and compassionate love; 3/ transactional love; 4/ post-humanist perspectives and ‘harmony love’. Finally, we examine love in relation to power; love-related emotions; and how understandings of love and culture impact gender relations.