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Beef production represents a complex global sustainability challenge including reducing poverty and hunger and the need for climate action. Understanding the trade-offs between these goals at a global scale and at resolutions to inform land use is critical for a global transition towards sustainable beef. Here we optimize global beef production at fine spatial resolution and identify trade-offs between economic and environmental objectives interpretable to global sustainability ambitions. We reveal that shifting production areas, compositions of current feeds and informed land restoration enable large emissions reductions of 34–85% annually (612–1,506 MtCO2e yr−1) without increasing costs. Even further reductions are possible but come at a trade-off with costs of production. Critically our approach can help to identify such trade-offs among multiple sustainability goals, produces fine-resolution mapping to inform required land-use change and does so at the scale necessary to shift towards a globally sustainable industry for beef and to sectors beyond.

Over half of the world's tropical forests are used for timber extraction by selective logging. Even though these forests are degraded to a variable degree, they are still important for tropical forest biodiversity. It is not yet known how biodiversity is impacted during and immediately after logging, and how fast it recovers. Here, we use ecoacoustics, and specifically the recording and analysis of soundscape dawn time series, to monitor the immediate impact and early recovery of biodiversity after selective logging. We describe the results of capturing a dawn time series of soundscapes in a Bornean tropical lowland forest before, during, and after selective logging. Soundscape saturation, which is correlated with the number of different calls that make up the soundscape, dropped significantly immediately after selective logging was carried out. The reduced saturation was mostly due to the loss of bird vocalizations, whereas insects did not seem to be impacted. In a space-for-time recording from the same area, soundscape saturation during the equivalent time of day recovered after one year, however began to drop again in years 2 and 3 after logging. Our results are suggestive of a strong effect of logging and seasonality on tropical forest soundscapes. Being able to track biodiversity changes and recovery over time in tropical forests managed for timber production can ultimately improve our odds of avoiding more species extinctions, by providing evidence-based recommendations on how much time forests need to recover biodiversity.

Opportunities, challenges and recommended targeted actions to accelerate qualitative data sharing to address complex socio-environmental problems Socio-environmental synthesis as a research approach contributes to broader sustainability policy and practice by reusing data from disparate disciplines in innovative ways. Synthesizing diverse data sources and types of evidence can help to better conceptualize, investigate and address increasingly complex socio-environmental problems. However, sharing qualitative data for re-use remains uncommon when compared to sharing quantitative data. We argue that qualitative data present untapped opportunities for sustainability science, and discuss practical pathways to facilitate and realize the benefits from sharing and reusing qualitative data. However, these opportunities and benefits are also hindered by practical, ethical and epistemological challenges. To address these challenges and accelerate qualitative data sharing, we outline enabling conditions and suggest actions for researchers, institutions, funders, data repository managers and publishers.

The authors regret that two co-authors were unintentionally missed in the previous paper. We have added the two co-authors to recognize their contribution to the validation data - the biophysical field observations of land conditions. The error does not change the science of this study.

Selective logging in tropical forests changes the local number of animal species (alpha diversity), but it also likely affects species turnover (beta diversity). Whilst such changes are documented in many ecosystems under different disturbances, they are poorly understood in selectively logged tropical forests. By using soundscape recordings across broad spatial scales, we measured soundscape saturation and dissimilarity of pairs of soundscapes, as a proxy of alpha and beta diversity, respectively, in selectively logged and protected tropical forest in Indonesian Borneo. Soundscapes of selectively logged forests were more homogeneous than the soundscapes of never logged forest, and that soundscape saturation of protected forest was higher during the day and lower at night in comparison with selective logging concessions. Synthesis and applications. Selectively logged forests act as an important reservoir of biodiversity. Optimizing such production forests for biodiversity conservation requires the consideration of the total continuous area that is assigned to selective logging, and spatial arrangement of annual cutting blocks, as these could affect beta diversity and its recovery.

Tropical forests are globally important for both biodiversity conservation and the production of economically valuable wood products. To deliver both simultaneously, two contrasting approaches have been suggested: one partitions forests (sparing); the other integrates both objectives in the same location (sharing). To date, the ‘sparing or sharing’ debate has focused on agricultural landscapes, with scant attention paid to forest management. We explore the delivery of biodiversity and wood products in a continuum of sparing-to-sharing scenarios, using spatial optimization with set economic returns in East Kalimantan, Indonesia—a biodiversity hotspot. We found that neither sparing nor sharing extremes are optimal, although the greatest conservation value was attained towards the sparing end of the continuum. Critically, improved management strategies, such as reduced-impact logging, provided larger conservation gains than altering the balance between sparing and sharing, particularly for endangered species. Ultimately, debating sparing versus sharing has limited value while larger gains remain from improving forest management.

Systematic conservation planning and Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) are the two most widely used approaches for identifying important sites for biodiversity. However, there is limited advice for conservation policy makers and practitioners on when and how they should be combined. Here we provide such guidance, using insights from the recently developed Global Standard for the Identification of KBAs and the language of decision science to review and clarify their similarities and differences. We argue the two approaches are broadly similar, with both setting transparent environmental objectives and specifying actions. There is however greater contrast in the data used and actions involved, as the KBA approach uses biodiversity data alone and identifies sites for monitoring and vigilance actions at a minimum, whereas systematic conservation planning combines biodiversity and implementation-relevant data to guide management actions. This difference means there is much scope for combining approaches, so conservation planners should use KBA data in their analyses, setting context-specific targets for each KBA type, and planners and donors should use systematic conservation planning techniques when prioritizing between KBAs for management action. In doing so, they will benefit conservation policy, practice and research by building on the collaborations formed through the KBA Standard's development.

Cumulative pressures from global climate and ocean change combined with multiple regional and local-scale stressors pose fundamental challenges to coral reef managers worldwide. Understanding how cumulative stressors affect coral reef vulnerability is critical for successful reef conservation now and in the future. In this review, we present the case that strategically managing for increased ecological resilience (capacity for stress resistance and recovery) can reduce coral reef vulnerability (risk of net decline) up to a point. Specifically, we propose an operational framework for identifying effective management levers to enhance resilience and support management decisions that reduce reef vulnerability. Building on a system understanding of biological and ecological processes that drive resilience of coral reefs in different environmental and socio-economic settings, we present an Adaptive Resilience-Based management (ARBM) framework and suggest a set of guidelines for how and where resilience can be enhanced via management interventions. We argue that press-type stressors (pollution, sedimentation, overfishing, ocean warming and acidification) are key threats to coral reef resilience by affecting processes underpinning resistance and recovery, while pulse-type (acute) stressors (e.g. storms, bleaching events, crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks) increase the demand for resilience. We apply the framework to a set of example problems for Caribbean and Indo-Pacific reefs. A combined strategy of active risk reduction and resilience support is needed, informed by key management objectives, knowledge of reef ecosystem processes and consideration of environmental and social drivers. As climate change and ocean acidification erode the resilience and increase the vulnerability of coral reefs globally, successful adaptive management of coral reefs will become increasingly difficult. Given limited resources, on-the-ground solutions are likely to focus increasingly on actio, AuthorCount:29