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They have culminated in research programmes pivotal for providing the building blocks on which our current understanding of the role that agricultural land use plays in predicating climate change and biodiversity loss. Seeds of change: Establishing frameworks for understanding global environmental changes: This article belongs to Ambio's 50th Anniversary Collection. Theme: Agricultural land use. [Extracted from the article]

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted weaknesses in global food systems, as well as opening windows of opportunity for innovation and transformation. While the nature and extent of this crisis is rare, extreme climatic events will increase in magnitude and frequency, threatening similar societal impacts. It is therefore critical to identify mechanisms for developing food systems that are resilient to such impacts. We examine impacts of the crisis on UK food systems and how these further entrenched social inequalities. We present data on the experiences and actions of producers, consumers, and community organisers. The data were collected by adapting ongoing research to include surveys, interviews and online workshops focused on the pandemic. Actors' responses to the pandemic foreshadow how enduring change to food systems can be achieved. We identify support required to enable these transformations and argue that it is vital that these opportunities are embedded in food justice principles which promote people-centred approaches to avoid exacerbating injustices prevalent pre-crisis. Learning from these experiences therefore provides insights for how to make food systems elsewhere more resilient and just. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IPBES conceptual framework (CF) serves an instrumental value to translate usable knowledge into policy across spatial scales, alongside a normative function to engage diverse knowledge systems, promoting inclusivity and enhancing legitimacy. It has been argued that the CF operates as a boundary object, a communication and organisation tool for those working across diverse knowledge systems, designed to help them reach shared goals. The paper focuses on this claim, exploring the three core characteristics of a boundary object: interpretive flexibility, material and organisational structure, and the recognition of dissention. We suggest that too much emphasis is placed within the CF upon interpretive flexibility, whilst meeting information needs and the work requirements of all individuals, groups and communities who use the CF are overlooked. By forcing consensus, the IPBES CF ignores the critical dimensions of a boundary object. We argue that embracing the full characteristics of a boundary object will enable the IPBES to support knowledge coproduction and translation across the knowledge systems, better achieving its goal of providing policy advice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]