In this millennium, global drylands face a myriad of problems that present tough research, management, and policy challenges. Recent advances in dryland development, however, together with the integrative approaches of global change and sustainability science, suggest that concerns about land degradation, poverty, safeguarding biodiversity, and protecting the culture of 2.5 billion people can be confronted with renewed optimism. We review recent lessons about the functioning of dryland ecosystems and the livelihood systems of their human residents and introduce a new synthetic framework, the Drylands Development Paradigm (DDP). The DDP, supported by a growing and well-documented set of tools for policy and management action, helps navigate the inherent complexity of desertification and dryland development, identifying and synthesizing those factors important to research, management, and policy communities.

FUNDING Australia's grant system wastes centuries of researchers' time p.314 EVOLUTION First biography of W. D. Hamilton, the gentle giant of genetics p.313 HISTORY Ripping yarn of the ape-man of Victorian England p.310 ENVIRONMENT Conservationists call for a global zoning exercise for roads p.308

Human domination of the biosphere has led to substantial gains in human welfare and economic development, but simultaneously threatens the planetary conditions that underpin societal wellbeing and prosperity 1-3 . Emerging challenges, including water scarcity, food security issues and biodiversity loss, are intractable, interconnected and influenced by a range of crossscale drivers and complex feedback mechanisms 4 . These challenges, and attempts to address them, involve multiple groups of people with different needs and interests and are beset by social, political and administrative uncertainty 5 .Researchers and practitioners alike are turning to knowledge co-production as a promising approach to make progress in this complex space. Conceptually, knowledge co-production is part of a loosely linked and evolving cluster of participatory and transdisciplinary research approaches that have emerged in recent decades. These approaches reject the notion that scientists alone identify the

The need to adapt to climate change is now widely recognised as evidence of its impacts on social and natural systems grows and greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated. Yet efforts to adapt to climate change, as reported in the literature over the last decade and in selected case studies, have not led to substantial rates of implementation of adaptation actions despite substantial investments in adaptation science. Moreover, implemented actions have been mostly incremental and focused on proximate causes; there are far fewer reports of more systemic or transformative actions. We found that the nature and effectiveness of responses was strongly influenced by framing. Recent decision-oriented approaches that aim to overcome this situation are framed within a "pathways" metaphor to emphasise the need for robust decision making within adaptive processes in the face of uncertainty and inter-temporal complexity. However, to date, such "adaptation pathways" approaches have mostly focused on contexts with clearly identified decision-makers and unambiguous goals; as a result, they generally assume prevailing governance regimes are conducive for adaptation and hence constrain responses to proximate causes of vulnerability. In this paper, we explore a broader conceptualisation of "adaptation pathways" that draws on 'pathways thinking' in the sustainable development domain to consider the implications of path dependency, interactions between adaptation plans, vested interests and global change, and situations where values, interests, or institutions constrain societal responses to change. This re-conceptualisation of adaptation pathways aims to inform decision makers about integrating incremental actions on proximate causes with the transformative aspects of societal change. Case studies illustrate what this might entail. The paper ends with a call for further exploration of theory, methods and procedures to operationalise this broader conceptualisation of adaptation

Ecosystem stewardship is an action-oriented framework intended to foster social-ecological sustainability of a rapidly changing planet. Recent developments identify three strategies that make optimal use of current understanding in an environment of inevitable uncertainty and abrupt change: reducing the magnitude of, and exposure and sensitivity to, known stresses; focusing on proactive policies that shape change; and avoiding or escaping unsustainable socialecological traps. All social-ecological systems are vulnerable to recent and projected changes but have sources of adaptive capacity and resilience that can sustain ecosystem services and human well-being through active ecosystem stewardship. A Call for Ecosystem StewardshipHuman actions are having large and accelerating effects on Earth's climate, environment, and ecosystems 1, 2 , thereby degrading many ecosystem services (see glossary) 3 . This unsustainable 2 trajectory demands a dramatic change in human relationships with the environment and lifesupport system of the planet 2,3 . In this paper we address recent developments in thinking about the sustainable use of ecosystems and resources by society in the context of rapid and frequently abrupt change (Box 1).Western resource management paradigms have evolved from exploitation, where sustainability is not an important consideration, to steady-state resource management aimed at maximum or optimum sustainable yield (MSY or OSY, respectively) and efficient production of a single resource such as fish or trees, to ecosystem management to sustain a broader suite of ecosystem services 4 ( Fig. 1). Despite its sustainability goal, management for MSY or OSY tends to over-exploit targeted resources because of overly optimistic assumptions about the capacity to sustain productivity, avoid disturbances, regulate harvesters' behavior, and anticipate extreme economic or environmental events 5 . Ecosystem management seeks to sustain multiple ecosystem services 6 but often uses, as a reference point, historic conditions that are not achievable in a rapidly changing world.Given the challenges of sustainable use of ecosystems during rapid change, we advocate a shift to ecosystem stewardship (Table 1) 7,8 . Its central goal is to sustain the capacity to provide ecosystem services that support human well-being under conditions of uncertainty and change (see glossary). Uncertainty has always characterized social-ecological systems and should therefore not be an impediment to action. Such a paradigm shift entails important tradeoffs, particularly between efficiency and flexibility and between immediate and long-term benefits 9, 10 .Ecosystem stewardship integrates three broadly overlapping sustainability approaches 8,11, 12 (Fig. 2): reducing vulnerability to expected changes [11][12][13] ; fostering resilience to sustain 3 desirable conditions in the face of perturbations and uncertainty 14 ; and transforming from undesirable trajectories when opportunities emerge 15,16 . Adaptive capacity contributes to all three ...

Climate and weather variables such as rainfall, temperature, and pressure are indicators for hazards such as tropical cyclones, floods, and fires. The impact of these events can be due to a single variable being in an extreme state, but more often it is the result of a combination of variables not all of which are necessarily extreme. Here, the combination of variables or events that lead to an extreme impact is referred to as a compound event. Any given compound event will depend upon the nature and number of physical variables, the range of spatial and temporal scales, the strength of dependence between processes, and the perspective of the stakeholder who defines the impact. Modeling compound events is a large, complex, and interdisciplinary undertaking. To facilitate this task we propose the use of influence diagrams for defining, mapping, analyzing, modeling, and communicating the risk of the compound event. Ultimately, a greater appreciation of compound events will lead to further insight and a changed perspective on how impact risks are associated with climate‐related hazards. WIREs Clim Change 2014, 5:113–128. doi: 10.1002/wcc.252 This article is categorized under: Climate Models and Modeling > Knowledge Generation with Models Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Representing Uncertainty

China has responded to a national land-system sustainability emergency via an integrated portfolio of large-scale programmes. Here we review 16 sustainability programmes, which invested US$378.5 billion (in 2015 US$), covered 623.9 million hectares of land and involved over 500 million people, mostly since 1998. We find overwhelmingly that the interventions improved the sustainability of China's rural land systems, but the impacts are nuanced and adverse outcomes have occurred. We identify some key characteristics of programme success, potential risks to their durability, and future research needs. We suggest directions for China and other nations as they progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations' Agenda 2030.

On 25 September, 2015, world leaders met at the United Nations in New York, where they adopted the Sustainable Development Goals. These 17 goals and 169 targets set out an agenda for sustainable development for all nations that embraces economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection. Now, the agenda moves from agreeing the goals to implementing and ultimately achieving them. Across the goals, 42 targets focus on means of implementation, and the final goal, Goal 17, is entirely devoted to means of implementation. However, these implementation targets are largely silent about interlinkages and interdependencies among goals. This leaves open the possibility of perverse outcomes and unrealised synergies. We demonstrate that there must be greater attention on interlinkages in three areas: across sectors (e.g., finance, agriculture, energy, and transport), across societal actors (local authorities, government agencies, private sector, and civil society), and between and among low, medium and high income countries. Drawing on a global sustainability science and practice perspective, we provide seven recommendations to improve these interlinkages at both global and national levels, in relation to the UN’s categories of means of implementation: finance, technology, capacity building, trade, policy coherence, partnerships, and, finally, data, monitoring and accountability.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11625-016-0383-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.