• Energy Research

Abstract Understanding ecosystem service change necessitates an understanding of the social and ecological dimensions of ecosystem services and how they contribute to the well‐being of different people. These empirical research gaps persist across the tropics and in coastal environments, posing a challenge for small island states that depend on ecosystem services associated with near‐shore ecosystems like coral reefs. Perception‐based approaches allow for a rapid appraisal of what constitutes ecosystem service change, providing insights into why these changes matter, and how experiences of change differ between individuals. To capture perceptions of change in four ecosystem services associated with coral reefs (habitat, fishery, coastal protection and recreation services), we conducted 41 semi‐structured interviews with coral reef fishers from Seychelles, where reef ecosystems have been severely impacted by climate disturbance. We gathered quantitative and qualitative data to understand (a) if and what changes in reef‐associated ecosystem services have been perceived; (b) if fishers’ characteristics are associated with differences in perceived changes and (c) which changes matter most in fishers’ lives. Using a three‐dimensional approach to well‐being, we sought to identify whether reasons behind the importance of change connect to fishers’ well‐being. There have been noticeable changes across all four ecosystem services investigated. Changes include social, ecological and behavioural dynamics. Every fisher perceived at least one ecosystem service change but fishers who dive/snorkel or work from larger boats perceived a higher number of ecosystem services to have changed. Education, age and participation in snorkelling/diving were associated with fishers who identified changing habitat services as most important, whereas fishers from families with fewer livelihood alternatives and from smaller islands identified changing fishery services as most important. Different aspects of the subjective, relational and material dimensions of well‐being were implicated in why changing services matter. Despite known ecological shifts in reef condition, this research is one of few studies to empirically show how changes across multiple ecosystem services are being perceived. These perceived changes are complex, engage both the social and ecological dimensions of services, and connect in multiple ways to how fishers feel about their lives, their relationships and material well‐being. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Much of the Earth's biosphere has been appropriated for the production of harvestable biomass in the form of food, fuel and fibre. Here we show that the simplification and intensification of these systems and their growing connection to international markets has yielded a global production ecosystem that is homogenous, highly connected and characterized by weakened internal feedbacks. We argue that these features converge to yield high and predictable supplies of biomass in the short term, but create conditions for novel and pervasive risks to emerge and interact in the longer term. Steering the global production ecosystem towards a sustainable trajectory will require the redirection of finance, increased transparency and traceability in supply chains, and the participation of a multitude of players, including integrated 'keystone actors' such as multinational corporations.

The scale, rate, and intensity of humans’ environmental impact has engendered broad discussion about how to find plausible pathways of development that hold the most promise for fostering a better future in the Anthropocene. However, the dominance of dystopian visions of irreversible environmental degradation and societal collapse, along with overly optimistic utopias and business‐as‐usual scenarios that lack insight and innovation, frustrate progress. Here, we present a novel approach to thinking about the future that builds on experiences drawn from a diversity of practices, worldviews, values, and regions that could accelerate the adoption of pathways to transformative change (change that goes beyond incremental improvements). Using an analysis of 100 initiatives, or “seeds of a good Anthropocene”, we find that emphasizing hopeful elements of existing practice offers the opportunity to: (1) understand the values and features that constitute a good Anthropocene, (2) determine the processes that lead to the emergence and growth of initiatives that fundamentally change human–environmental relationships, and (3) generate creative, bottom‐up scenarios that feature well‐articulated pathways toward a more positive future.

Research practice, funding agencies and global science organizations suggest that research aimed at addressing sustainability challenges is most effective when ‘co-produced’ by academics and non-academics. Co-production promises to address the complex nature of contemporary sustainability challenges better than more traditional scientific approaches. But definitions of knowledge co-production are diverse and often contradictory. We propose a set of four general principles that underlie high-quality knowledge co-production for sustainability research. Using these principles, we offer practical guidance on how to engage in meaningful co-productive practices, and how to evaluate their quality and success.

Human activities are changing ecosystems at an unprecedented rate, yet large-scale studies into how local human impacts alter natural systems and interact with other aspects of global change are still lacking. Here we provide empirical evidence that local human impacts fundamentally alter relationships between ecological communities and environmental drivers. Using tropical coral reefs as a study system, we investigated the influence of contrasting levels of local human impact using a spatially extensive dataset spanning 62 outer reefs around inhabited Pacific islands. We tested how local human impacts (low versus high determined using a threshold of 25 people km−2 reef) affected benthic community (i) structure, and (ii) relationships with environmental predictors using pre-defined models and model selection tools. Data on reef depth, benthic assemblages, and herbivorous fish communities were collected from field surveys. Additional data on thermal stress, storm exposure, and market gravity (a function of human population size and reef accessibility) were extracted from public repositories. Findings revealed that reefs subject to high local human impact were characterised by relatively more turf algae (>10% higher mean absolute coverage) and lower live coral cover (9% less mean absolute coverage) than reefs subject to low local human impact, but had similar macroalgal cover and coral morphological composition. Models based on spatio-physical predictors were significantly more accurate in explaining the variation of benthic assemblages at sites with low (mean adjusted-R2 = 0.35) rather than high local human impact, where relationships became much weaker (mean adjusted-R2 = 0.10). Model selection procedures also identified a distinct shift in the relative importance of different herbivorous fish functional groups in explaining benthic communities depending on the local human impact level. These results demonstrate that local human impacts alter natural systems and indicate that projecting climate change impacts may be particularly challenging at reefs close to higher human populations, where dependency and pressure on ecosystem services are highest.

Globally, environmental and social change in water-scarce regions challenge the sustainability of social-ecological systems. WaterSES, a sponsored working group within the Program for Ecosystem Change and Society, explores and compares the social-ecological dynamics related to water scarcity across placed-based international research sites with contrasting local and regional water needs and governance, including research sites in Spain and Sweden in Europe, South Africa, China, and Alabama, Idaho, Oklahoma, and Texas in the USA. This paper aims to provide a commentary on insights into conducting future solutions-oriented research on water scarcity based on the understanding of the social-ecological dynamics of water scarce regions.

Coral reefs worldwide face unprecedented cumulative anthropogenic effects of interacting local human pressures, global climate change and distal social processes. Reefs are also bound by the natural biophysical environment within which they exist. In this context, a key challenge for effective management is understanding how anthropogenic and biophysical conditions interact to drive distinct coral reef configurations. Here, we use machine learning to conduct explanatory predictions on reef ecosystems defined by both fish and benthic communities. Drawing on the most spatially extensive dataset available across the Hawaiian archipelago—20 anthropogenic and biophysical predictors over 620 survey sites—we model the occurrence of four distinct reef regimes and provide a novel approach to quantify the relative influence of human and environmental variables in shaping reef ecosystems. Our findings highlight the nuances of what underpins different coral reef regimes, the overwhelming importance of biophysical predictors and how a reef's natural setting may either expand or narrow the opportunity space for management interventions. The methods developed through this study can help inform reef practitioners and hold promises for replication across a broad range of ecosystems.