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The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwined and embedded in the biosphere, placing shocks and extreme events as part of this dynamic; humanity has become the major force in shaping the future of the Earth system as a whole; and the scale and pace of the human dimension have caused climate change, rapid loss of biodiversity, growing inequalities, and loss of resilience to deal with uncertainty and surprise. Taken together, human actions are challenging the biosphere foundation for a prosperous development of civilizations. The Anthropocene reality— of rising system-wide turbulence—calls for transformative change towards sustainable futures. Emerging technologies, social innovations, broader shifts in cultural repertoires, as well as a diverse portfolio of active stewardship of human actions in support of a resilient biosphere are highlighted as essential parts of such transformations.

Humanity has emerged as a major force in the operation of the biosphere. The focus is shifting from the environment as externality to the biosphere as precondition for social justice, economic development, and sustainability. In this article, we exemplify the intertwined nature of social-ecological systems and emphasize that they operate within, and as embedded parts of the biosphere and as such coevolve with and depend on it. We regard social-ecological systems as complex adaptive systems and use a social-ecological resilience approach as a lens to address and understand their dynamics. We raise the challenge of stewardship of development in concert with the biosphere for people in diverse contexts and places as critical for long-term sustainability and dignity in human relations. Biosphere stewardship is essential, in the globalized world of interactions with the Earth system, to sustain and enhance our life-supporting environment for human well-being and future human development on Earth, hence, the need to reconnect development to the biosphere foundation and the need for a biosphere-based sustainability science.

Humanity has never benefited more from the ocean as a source of food, livelihoods, and well-being, yet on a global scale this has been accompanied by trajectories of degradation and persistent inequity. Awareness of this has spurred policymakers to develop an expanding network of ocean governance instruments, catalyzed civil society pressure on the public and private sector, and motivated engagement by the general public as consumers and constituents. Among local communities, diverse examples of stewardship have rested on the foundation of care, knowledge and agency. But does an analog for stewardship exist in the context of globally active multinational corporations? Here, we consider the seafood industry and its efforts to navigate this new reality through private governance. We examine paradigmatic events in the history of the sustainable seafood movement, from seafood boycotts in the 1970s through to the emergence of certification measures, benchmarks, and diverse voluntary environmental programs. We note four dimensions of stewardship in which efforts by actors within the seafood industry have aligned with theoretical concepts of stewardship, which we describe as (1) moving beyond compliance, (2) taking a systems perspective, (3) living with uncertainty, and (4) understanding humans as embedded elements of the biosphere. In conclusion, we identify emerging stewardship challenges for the seafood industry and suggest the urgent need to embrace a broader notion of ocean stewardship that extends beyond seafood.

Within-city green infrastructure can offer opportunities and new contexts for people to become stewards of ecosystem services. We analyze cities as social–ecological systems, synthesize the literature, and provide examples from more than 15 years of research in the Stockholm urban region, Sweden. The social–ecological approach spans from investigating ecosystem properties to the social frameworks and personal values that drive and shape human interactions with nature. Key findings demonstrate that urban ecosystem services are generated by social–ecological systems and that local stewards are critically important. However, land-use planning and management seldom account for their role in the generation of urban ecosystem services. While the small scale patchwork of land uses in cities stimulates intense interactions across borders much focus is still on individual patches. The results highlight the importance and complexity of stewardship of urban biodiversity and ecosystem services and of the planning and governance of urban green infrastructure.

Ground-sourced tree density data is assembled to provide a global map of tree density, which reveals that there are three trillion trees (tenfold more than previous estimates); tree numbers have declined by nearly half since the start of human civilization and over 15 billion trees are lost on an annual basis. Three trillion trees and counting Until now, our understanding of global forest ecosystems has been generated from satellite information that can tell us about the area of forest. Policy makers and environmental scientists have relied heavily on this information when considering trees' involvement in patterns of biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles and their contribution to ecosystem services. Thomas Crowther et al . have extended the scope of this information by generating a map of global tree density that reveals what is going on below the canopy. The map, which was generated using more than 400,000 ground-sourced measurements of tree density, reveals patterns in tree numbers at regional and global scales. Using this map, the authors are able to estimate that the current global tree number stands at approximately 3 trillion. See also News by Ehrenberg The global extent and distribution of forest trees is central to our understanding of the terrestrial biosphere. We provide the first spatially continuous map of forest tree density at a global scale. This map reveals that the global number of trees is approximately 3.04 trillion, an order of magnitude higher than the previous estimate. Of these trees, approximately 1.30 trillion exist in tropical and subtropical forests, with 0.74 trillion in boreal regions and 0.66 trillion in temperate regions. Biome-level trends in tree density demonstrate the importance of climate and topography in controlling local tree densities at finer scales, as well as the overwhelming effect of humans across most of the world. Based on our projected tree densities, we estimate that over 15 billion trees are cut down each year, and the global number of trees has fallen by approximately 46% since the start of human civilization.

Humanity has emerged as a major force in the operation of the biosphere, with a significant imprint on the Earth System, challenging social-ecological resilience. This new situation calls for a fundamental shift in perspectives, world views, and institutions. Human development and progress must be reconnected to the capacity of the biosphere and essential ecosystem services to be sustained. Governance challenges include a highly interconnected and faster world, cascading social-ecological interactions and planetary boundaries that create vulnerabilities but also opportunities for social-ecological change and transformation. Tipping points and thresholds highlight the importance of understanding and managing resilience. New modes of flexible governance are emerging. A central challenge is to reconnect these efforts to the changing preconditions for societal development as active stewards of the Earth System. We suggest that the Millennium Development Goals need to be reframed in such a planetary stewardship context combined with a call for a new social contract on global sustainability. The ongoing mind shift in human relations with Earth and its boundaries provides exciting opportunities for societal development in collaboration with the biosphere—a global sustainability agenda for humanity.

Terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems regulate climate at local to global scales through exchanges of energy and matter with the atmosphere and assist with climate change mitigation through nature‐based climate solutions. Climate science is no longer a study of the physics of the atmosphere and oceans, but also the ecology of the biosphere. This is the promise of Earth system science: to transcend academic disciplines to enable study of the interacting physics, chemistry, and biology of the planet. However, long‐standing tension in protecting, restoring, and managing forest ecosystems to purposely improve climate evidences the difficulties of interdisciplinary science. For four centuries, forest management for climate betterment was argued, legislated, and ultimately dismissed, when nineteenth century atmospheric scientists narrowly defined climate science to the exclusion of ecology. Today's Earth system science, with its roots in global models of climate, unfolds in similar ways to the past. With Earth system models, geoscientists are again defining the ecology of the Earth system. Here we reframe Earth system science so that the biosphere and its ecology are equally integrated with the fluid Earth to enable Earth system prediction for planetary stewardship. Central to this is the need to overcome an intellectual heritage to the models that elevates geoscience and marginalizes ecology and local land knowledge. The call for kilometer‐scale atmospheric and ocean models, without concomitant scientific and computational investment in the land and biosphere, perpetuates the geophysical view of Earth and will not fully provide the comprehensive actionable information needed for a changing climate. Plain Language Summary Terrestrial ecosystems provide a natural solution to planetary warming by storing carbon, dissipating surface heating through evapotranspiration, and other processes. That forests, in particular, influence climate is a centuries‐old premise, but its potential for planetary stewardship has not been realized. In an acrimonious controversy spanning several centuries, managing forests to purposely change climate was advocated, legislated, and resoundingly dismissed as unscientific. Similar intellectual bias is evident in today's Earth system science and the associated Earth system models, which are the state‐of‐the‐art models used to inform climate policy. The popular characterization of Earth system science lauds its interdisciplinary melding of physics, chemistry, and biology, but the models emphasize the physics and fluid dynamics of the atmosphere and oceans and present a limited perspective of terrestrial ecosystems in the Earth system. Ecologists studying the living world increasingly have a voice in Earth system science as we move beyond the physical basis for climate change to Earth system prediction for planetary stewardship. As we once again look to forests to solve a climate problem, we must surmount the disciplinary narrowness that failed to answer the forest‐climate question in the past and that continues to limit the interdisciplinary potential of Earth system science. Key Points Nature‐based climate solutions have been advocated for centuries, but have been distorted by academic bias and colonialist prejudice Earth system science, while recognizing the climate services of the biosphere, has a geophysical bias in interdisciplinary collaboration To realize the potential for planetary stewardship, Earth system models must embrace the living world equally with the fluid world

Advances in research on environmental problems and public awareness of them have led to renewed concern about the need to establish mechanisms and figures to protect and manage sites so that geoecological processes remain outside the dynamics of anthropic occupation. This research has been approached from an inductive and qualitative perspective based on case studies to examine the articulation of the Spanish geoparks, their dynamics, and the experiences of private valorization in them. Geological heritage is seen as a lever for the promotion of the territory. In all cases, although the geological–geomorphological–paleontological–environmental resources must be significant, this designation aims to enhance the value of all assets, both natural and cultural, conceiving the geopark not as a figure of environmental protection but as a “figure to promote local development”. A total of 48 land stewardship initiatives were identified in 11 of the 15 Spanish geoparks. The most significant presence of initiatives was found in the geoparks of Catalonia, followed by the Lanzarote Geopark. No nature-based schools are located within geoparks, except for Wild Me in Central Catalonia. However, the presence of nature-based schools in biosphere reserves (BRs) seems to be more common. Framing alternative proposals, such as nature-based schools in these areas and using land stewardship in their operation, can become an opportunity to protect a region’s geological and cultural heritage and improve local communities’ quality of life through sustainable and responsible economic and tourism activities. Early-years education in the natural environment facilitates the acquisition of long-term pro-environmental skills, competencies, and behaviors that last into adulthood and act as multipliers for others.

This article explores the links between agency, institutions, and innovation in navigating shifts and large-scale transformations toward global sustainability. Our central question is whether social and technical innovations can reverse the trends that are challenging critical thresholds and creating tipping points in the earth system, and if not, what conditions are necessary to escape the current lock-in. Large-scale transformations in information technology, nano- and biotechnology, and new energy systems have the potential to significantly improve our lives; but if, in framing them, our globalized society fails to consider the capacity of the biosphere, there is a risk that unsustainable development pathways may be reinforced. Current institutional arrangements, including the lack of incentives for the private sector to innovate for sustainability, and the lags inherent in the path dependent nature of innovation, contribute to lock-in, as does our incapacity to easily grasp the interactions implicit in complex problems, referred to here as the ingenuity gap. Nonetheless, promising social and technical innovations with potential to change unsustainable trajectories need to be nurtured and connected to broad institutional resources and responses. In parallel, institutional entrepreneurs can work to reduce the resilience of dominant institutional systems and position viable shadow alternatives and niche regimes.

Multi-stakeholder environmental management and governance processes are essential to realize social and ecological outcomes. Participation, collaboration, and learning are emphasized in these processes; to gain insights into how they influence stakeholders' evaluations of outcomes in relation to management and governance interventions we use a path analysis approach to examine their relationships in individuals in four UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. We confirm a model showing that participation in more activities leads to greater ratings of process, and in turn, better evaluations of outcomes. We show the effects of participation in activities on evaluation of outcomes appear to be driven by learning more than collaboration. Original insights are offered as to how the evaluations of outcomes by stakeholders are shaped by their participation in activities and their experiences in management and governance processes. Understanding stakeholder perceptions about the processes in which they are involved and their evaluation of outcomes is imperative, and influences current and future levels of engagement. As such, the evaluation of outcomes themselves are an important tangible product from initiatives. Our research contributes to a future research agenda aimed at better understanding these pathways and their implications for engagement in stewardship and ultimately social and ecological outcomes, and to developing recommendations for practitioners engaged in environmental management and governance.