About the Satoyama Initiative Thematic Review:

The Satoyama Initiative Thematic Review is a compilation of case studies providing useful knowledge and lessons focused on a specific theme related to “socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS)”. Its overall aim is to collect practical experiences and relevant knowledge built from on-the-ground management activities and to contribute to policy recommendations. Each volume also includes a synthesis chapter clarifying the volume’s relevance to policy and academic discussions to encourage the application of lessons learned in the field.

Like the last five volumes, Volume 11 will be published by Springer. See the previous nine volumes below.

• Satoyama Initiative Thematic Review Vol.1: “Enhancing knowledge for better management of socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS)”
• Satoyama Initiative Thematic Review Vol.2: “Mainstreaming concepts and approaches of socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS) into policy and decision-making”
• Satoyama Initiative Thematic Review Vol.3: “Livelihoods and socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS)”
• Satoyama Initiative Thematic Review Vol.4: “Sustainable use of biodiversity in socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS) and its contribution to effective area-based conservation”
• Satoyama Initiative Thematic Review Vol.5: “Understanding the multiple values associated with sustainable use in socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS)”
• Satoyama Initiative Thematic Review Vol.6: “Fostering transformative change for sustainability in the context of socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS)”
• Satoyama Initiative Thematic Review Vol.7: “Biodiversity-health-sustainability nexus in socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS)”
• Satoyama Initiative Thematic Review Vol.8: “Ecosystem restoration through managing socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS)”
• Satoyama Initiative Thematic Review Vol.9: “Business and biodiversity: reciprocal connections in the context of socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS)” (to be published in February 2025)
• Satoyama Initiative Thematic Review Vol.10: “Ensuring ecological connectivity in socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS)” (to be published in early or mid 2026)

Theme

Addressing Interlinked Climate and Biodiversity Challenges in Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes (SEPLS)

This volume will highlight how efforts in managing SEPLS can address climate change and biodiversity loss and ensure human well-being and quality of life simultaneously. Landscape approaches underpinning the management of SEPLS facilitate the functional integration of biodiversity with multiple benefits for people, including tangible, intangible and regulatory ones on a landscape or seascape scale. These approaches contribute to the simultaneous attainment of climate adaptation, biodiversity conservation and a good quality of life for all. This volume will look at the strategies and approaches by which multiple stakeholders collaboratively minimize trade-offs, maximize synergies and ensure human well-being and quality of life in addressing the intertwined climate and biodiversity crises.  

Background

Climate change and biodiversity loss are two intertwined global crises threatening human well-being and quality of life. Human-induced climate change, partly resulting from biomass decline and biodiversity loss, exacerbates accelerating biodiversity loss through disturbing ecosystem functioning and causing habitat loss.^[1] Reinforcing detrimental impacts on human societies include heightening food insecurity, poverty, health risks, involuntary displacements, political instability, social unrest and conflict.^[2],[3],[4] However, given the key role of ecosystems and biodiversity in absorbing and dissolving greenhouse gasses, ensuring healthy conditions of the biosphere on land and sea can lead to co-benefits in achieving the objectives for climate change mitigation and adaptation and biodiversity.^[1],[5]

In this context, in situ conservation through spatial planning and ecosystem restoration has been increasingly promoted as flagship global targets and commitments in multiple international frameworks, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted in 2022 for the Convention Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration for the period of 2021-2030, the Glasgow Declaration on Forests and Land Use of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) in 2021 and the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature in support of the first UN Summit on Biodiversity in 2020.^[1],[6]

Global estimates suggest that intact habitats should cover between 30% and 50% of land and sea surface areas to deter biodiversity loss.^[5] This is a quite sizable proportion that generally exceeds current levels, although the specific needs and requirements for these areas vary depending on particular biological conditions and local and regional contexts.^[1],[5]

As a mainstay of biodiversity conservation, increasing protected areas may help tackle both climate change impacts and biodiversity loss by preserving critical carbon-rich ecosystems.^[7],[8] However, it is insufficient to halt the escalating biodiversity loss and climate change on a global scale, and sometimes comes with adverse effects in socioeconomic, ethical and philosophical terms.^[5],[6],[9] Besides the current deficient portion of the planet under protection, the effectiveness of protected areas is often limited due to their design, application and enforcement (e.g., too small on aggregate, inadequately distributed and interconnected, poorly managed and resourced).^[5],[6] Related to this, a fundamental challenge to protected areas as a static boundary-based conservation measure is the changes in climate variables in time and space, which could shift species composition and habitat conditions and thus may reduce the potential of conservation effects.^[10],[11] Furthermore, the establishment or expansion of protected areas can cause social tensions and conflicts, often negatively impacting the poor or marginalized communities in particular (e.g., land tenure and human rights).^{[12],[13],[14],[15]}

To attain multiple social objectives, including food security and equity, more encompassing and inclusive approaches have been called for to address interlinked climate and biodiversity challenges. Moving beyond the conventional focus on protected areas and species-focused conservation.^[16],[17] In this regard, landscape approaches – generally defined as long-term collaborative processes to balance conservation and development on a landscape or seascape scale – are epitomized as innovative conservation paradigms to functionally integrate intact biodiversity with the provisioning of tangible, intangible and regulatory benefits from local to larger scales.^[5] Such approaches with a focus on multifunctional landscapes and seascapes are imperative to address climate-biodiversity interactions and their nexus with sustainable development, whereas biodiversity management has been extending more to a dynamic continuum or networks of areas with different levels of protection, ranging from highly protected areas to human-dominant spaces.^[1],[5]

With a growing concern over the functional separation in the international processes for the climate and biodiversity agendas, efforts are being made to facilitate integration between these two domains of science-policy interface, namely the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).^[5],[6] Since the first ever formal collaboration in preparing the IPBES-IPCC cosponsored workshop report on biodiversity and climate change,^[5] the two bodies’ engagements with each other have been strengthened. For instance, the 11^th Session of the IPBES Plenary (IPBES-11) held in Windhoek, Namibia from 10-16 December 2024 adopted the decision on implementation of the IPBES rolling work programme up to 2030, where further collaboration between the two domains, including scientific cooperation, information-sharing and understanding of relevant processes and initiatives was urged across various levels.^[18]

At the same time, hundreds of cooperative initiatives by state, nonstate and subnational actors have already been identified beyond UN processes as efforts to create co-benefits in tackling climate and biodiversity crises.^[19] As advocated for “whole-of-government” and “whole-of-society” approaches, the roles of nonstate and subnational actors in global sustainability governance have been increasingly emphasized in both the UNFCCC and the CBD.^[19] Such approaches allow for better policymaking and implementation on the climate and biodiversity issues, for instance, through expanding data collection, experimentation and innovation, and enhancing communications, accountability, trust and legitimacy.^{[20],[21],[22]} However, caution is needed to avoid contradictory or compromised consequences, such as corporate greenwashing, exacerbated power disparities and inequality, loosened monitoring and reporting procedures and the creation of loopholes in the existing international mechanisms.^{[21],[23],[24]} To unleash the potential of multi-stakeholder initiatives, the need for further research is claimed to better understand “how and under what conditions cooperative initiatives could harness their potential” to address climate change and biodiversity loss simultaneously.^[19]

Based on practicing landscape approaches through managing SEPLS, many of the case studies from IPSI exemplify how collaborative efforts on a landscape or seascape scale contribute to maximizing co-benefits, minimizing trade-offs and averting codetrimental outcomes (mutually harmful) along the interactions among biodiversity, climate and society. Typically centred on managed ecosystems, they also demonstrate the roles of “shared lands” (i.e., areas with a gradient natural state in between intact nature and completely altered spaces)^[25] in addressing both climate and biodiversity challenges while integrating people with nature for sustainability. Furthermore, resting on on-the-ground management efforts, IPSI case studies provide rich insights into how Indigenous and local knowledge helps to support and enhance an innovative conservation paradigm to attain the outcomes of climate adaptation, biodiversity conservation and good quality of life for all.

The Satoyama Initiative Thematic Review Vol. 11

This volume will focus on the relevance of SEPLS to aspects of intertwined climate and biodiversity challenges. Cases to be included in the volume may highlight the roles, attitudes, motivations and actions of multiple stakeholders, including smallholders, Indigenous Peoples and local communities and others in addressing climate and biodiversity challenges simultaneously while ensuring human wellbeing and quality of life through their work in SEPLS. They are also expected to provide insights into how landscape approaches being practiced through the management of SEPLS can contribute to the relevant local, national and global policymaking and implementation. Furthermore, it is intended to offer useful knowledge and information for the collaborative IPBES-IPCC engagements while feeding into the implementation of the new IPSI Strategy and Plan of Action for 2023-2030, particularly two of its five strategic objectives, namely Area-Based Conservation Measures and Ecosystem Restoration.

IPSI partners are invited to contribute case studies related to this theme, demonstrating experiences and insights on, among others:

• What climate change impacts on biodiversity and societies have been observed in managing SEPLS in your areas?
• What multiple benefits have been derived from the management of SEPLS, and how have these benefits helped address both climate and biodiversity challenges while supporting the livelihoods and well-being of local communities?
• What efforts have been made to foster synergies and minimize trade-offs in addressing climate and biodiversity challenges through the management of SEPLS? How can you evaluate and monitor any co-benefits, trade-offs and codetrimental effects of the interactions among climate, biodiversity and society?
• What are the challenges and opportunities in practicing landscape approaches through the management of SEPLS to achieve multiple objectives of climate adaptation, biodiversity conservation and good quality of life for all?
• Has local and traditional knowledge and cultural diversity helped to address climate and biodiversity challenges for socially and ecologically sound outcomes? If so, how?

How to submit a manuscript and what happens after submission:

Eligibility:

Authors are invited to submit a paper if at least one of the authors belongs to an IPSI member organization. (See http://satoyama-initiative.org/en/partnership/ipsi_members/)

Procedure:

Authors are requested to submit an abstract (400 words) to the IPSI Secretariat by email (sitr@unu.edu) by 3 February 2025. Submission of a full manuscript should be made before 31 March 2025, after receiving confirmation from the editorial team. Authors are requested to follow the Authors’ Guide and the reference style and are encouraged to use the Template for Manuscripts. After screening, selected authors will be informed in April 2025 and then invited to a Case Study Workshop planned to be held virtually in June or July 2025. This Case Study Workshop will offer an opportunity to get feedback on manuscripts and engage in discussions with other participants to develop a synthesis paper to be included in the volume.

Timeline (dates are subject to change):

3 February 2025:            Deadline for submission of abstracts (400 words)

31 March 2025:              Deadline for submission of full manuscripts

April 2025:                       Notification of selected authors

June or July 2025:           Selected authors participate in Case Study Workshop (virtual)

September 2025:            Submission of revised manuscripts

March or April 2026:      Publication

Related documents:

• Document 2. Author’s Guide
• Document 3. Template for manuscripts
• Document 4. Spelling Guide
• Document 5. Reference style
• Document 6. Abstract format

For inquiries, please contact: 

Dr. Maiko Nishi at the IPSI Secretariat (SITR@unu.edu).