The term tipping point has experienced explosive popularity across multiple disciplines over the last decade. Research on social-ecological systems (SES) has contributed to the growth and diversity of the term's use. The diverse uses of the term obscure potential differences between tipping behavior in natural and social systems, and issues of causality across natural and social system components in SES. This paper aims to create the foundation for a discussion within the SES research community about the appropriate use of the term tipping point, especially the relatively novel term 'social tipping point.' We review existing literature on tipping points and similar concepts (e.g. regime shifts, critical transitions) across all spheres of science published between 1960 and 2016 with a special focus on a recent and still small body of work on social tipping points. We combine quantitative and qualitative analyses in a bibliometric approach, rooted in an expert elicitation process. We find that the term tipping point became popular after the year 2000-long after the terms regime shift and critical transition-across all spheres of science. We identify 23 distinct features of tipping point definitions and their prevalence across disciplines, but find no clear taxonomy of discipline-specific definitions. Building on the most frequently used features, we propose definitions for tipping points in general and social tipping points in SES in particular.

Global sustainability initiatives are gaining momentum and impact, and place-based research can provide complementary insights to strengthen them. Here, we explore the current and potential role of place-based research into informing global sustainability initiatives by assessing the strengths, challenges, and opportunities. We show that place-based research allows for a better understanding of global social-ecological dynamics, and that transformations towards sustainability are often triggered at the local scale through the co-construction of local solutions. We discuss that the very nature of place-based research can hinder its transferability because its global integration faces temporal, spatial and governance scale mismatches, and we identify some of the key challenges of scaling-up its findings. We highlight new opportunities to mainstream place-based research that are emerging from first, long-term networks of place-based research, second, new institutional research settings that contribute with conceptual comprehensive frameworks and capacity building tools, third, a global community of practice, and fourth, the concept of region as a bridge between local and global sustainability initiatives. We believe that the time is ripe to promote the role of place-based social-ecological research as a key contributor to achieve global sustainability goals.

Non-technical abstract Projections of a burgeoning population coupled with global environmental change offer an increasingly dire picture of the state of the world's food security in the not-too-distant future. But how can we transform the current food system to become more sustainable, more equitable and more just? We identify kitchens as sites of transformative innovation in the food system where cooks and chefs can leverage traditional food knowledge about local food species to create delicious and nutritious dishes. Achieving a sustainable food system is a grand challenge, one where cooks in particular are stepping forward as innovators to find solutions.

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