As the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration begins, there remains insufficient emphasis on the human and social dimensions of restoration. The potential that restoration holds for achieving both ecological and social goals can only be met through a shift toward people‐centered restoration strategies. Toward this end, this paper synthesizes critical insights from a special issue on “Restoration for whom, by whom” to propose actionable ways to center humans and social dimensions in ecosystem restoration, with the aim of generating fair and sustainable initiatives. These rules respond to a relative silence on socio‐political issues in di Sacco et al.'s “Ten golden rules for reforestation to optimize carbon sequestration, biodiversity recovery and livelihood benefits” on socio‐political issues and offer complementary guidance to their piece. Arranged roughly in order from pre‐intervention, design/initiation, implementation, through the monitoring, evaluation and learning phases, the 10 people‐centered rules are: (1) Recognize diversity and interrelations among stakeholders and rightsholders'; (2) Actively engage communities as agents of change; (3) Address socio‐historical contexts; (4) Unpack and strengthen resource tenure for marginalized groups; (5) Advance equity across its multiple dimensions and scales; (6) Generate multiple benefits; (7) Promote an equitable distribution of costs, risks, and benefits; (8) Draw on different types of evidence and knowledge; (9) Question dominant discourses; and (10) Practice inclusive and holistic monitoring, evaluation, and learning. We contend that restoration initiatives are only tenable when the issues raised in these rules are respectfully addressed.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) stabilization and destabilization has been studied intensively. Yet, the factors which control SOC content across scales remain unclear. Earlier studies demonstrated that soil texture and geochemistry strongly affect SOC content. However, those findings primarily rely on data from temperate regions where soil mineralogy, weathering status and climatic conditions generally differ from tropical and subtropical regions. We investigated soil properties and climate variables influencing SOC concentrations across sub-Saharan Africa. A total of 1601 samples were analyzed, collected from two depths (0–20 and 20–50 cm) from 17 countries as part of the Africa Soil Information Service project (AfSIS). The data set spans arid to humid climates and includes soils with a wide range of pH values, weathering status, soil texture, exchangeable cations, extractable metals and land cover types. The most important SOC predictors were identified by linear mixed-effects models, regression trees and random forest models. Our results indicate that geochemical properties, mainly oxalate-extractable metals (Al and Fe) and exchangeable Ca, are equally important compared to climatic variables (mean annual temperature and aridity index). Together, they explain approximately two-thirds of SOC variation across sub-Saharan Africa. Oxalate-extractable metals were most important in wet regions with acidic and highly weathered soils, whereas exchangeable Ca was more important in alkaline and less weathered soils in drier regions. In contrast, land cover and soil texture were not significant SOC predictors on this large scale. Our findings indicate that key factors controlling SOC across sub-Saharan Africa are broadly similar to those in temperate regions, despite differences in soil development history.

It has been claimed that Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), a burgeoning practice of farming in India based on low-inputs and influenced by agro-ecological principles, has the potential to improve farm viability and food security. However, there is concern that the success of the social movement fueling the adoption of ZBNF has become out of step with the science underpinning its performance relative to other farming systems. Based on twenty field plot experiments established across six districts in Andhra Pradesh (SE India), managed by locally based farmer researchers, we present the first ‘on the ground’ assessment of ZBNF performance. We show that there is no short-term yield penalty when adopting ZBNF in small scale farming systems compared to conventional and organic alternatives. In terms of treatment response, we observed differences between agro-climatic zones, but in this initial evaluation we cannot recommend specific options tuned to these different contexts.

The global movement for ecosystem restoration has gained momentum in response to the Bonn Challenge (2010) and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (UNDER, 2021–2030). While several science‐based guidelines exist to aid in achieving successful restoration outcomes, significant variation remains in the outcomes of restoration projects. Some of this disparity can be attributed to unexpected responses of ecosystem components to planned interventions. Given the complex nature of ecosystems, we propose that concepts from Complex Systems Science (CSS) that are linked to non‐linearity, such as regime shifts, ecological resilience and ecological feedbacks, should be employed to help explain this variation in restoration outcomes from an ecological perspective. Our framework, Explore Before You Restore, illustrates how these concepts impact restoration outcomes by influencing degradation and recovery trajectories. Additionally, we propose incorporating CSS concepts into the typical restoration project cycle through a CSS assessment phase and suggest that the need for such assessment is explicitly included in the guidelines to improve restoration outcomes. To facilitate this inclusion and make it workable by practitioners, we describe indicators and methods available for restoration teams to answer key questions that should make up such CSS assessment. In doing so, we identify key outstanding science and policy tasks that are needed to further operationalize CSS assessment in restoration. Synthesis and applications. By illustrating how key Complex Systems Science (CSS) concepts linked to non‐linear threshold behaviour can impact restoration outcomes through influencing recovery trajectories, our framework Explore Before You Restore demonstrates the need to incorporate Complex Systems thinking in ecosystem restoration. We argue that inclusion of CSS assessment into restoration project cycles, and more broadly, into international restoration guidelines, may significantly improve restoration outcomes.