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Stakeholder engagement (SkE) in research is currently experiencing significant growth within the fields of environmental and sustainability sciences. Stakeholder engagement ensures the relevance of research questions to societal expectations and the uptake and salience of the co‐produced knowledge and results for their use in the decision‐making process. In a context of societal challenges regarding biodiversity conservation and the sustainability of marine and freshwater social‐ecological systems (SESs), participatory approaches constitute key methods in applied research involving actions and decision‐making. There are, however, many gaps in the practical, conceptual and ethical ways stakeholders have been involved in research. We propose here a systematic map of the literature on SkE in research on marine and aquatic SESs carried out on French European and overseas territories, in order to draw up the first comprehensive overview of how SkE has developed and changed since 1945. This systematic map will identify a representative list of scientific articles on SkE in French marine and freshwater social‐ecological research. The literature search will include both academic literature (e.g. peer‐reviewed articles, reviews, meta‐analyses) and grey literature (e.g. reports, working papers) using the most relevant search engines for the scientific literature published between 1945 and 2023. Retrieved publications will be reviewed for relevance according to a predefined set of eligibility/ineligibility criteria by a group of trained reviewers. The eligibility check will be done in two successive screening steps: (1) title and abstract and (2) full text, each independently performed by two reviewers. All retained literature will be subjected to coding and metadata extraction using the Sysrev platform. No validity assessment will be undertaken. A database of the metadata extracted will be provided, along with a narrative description of the evidence base, and a set of figures

The two most urgent and interlinked environmental challenges humanity faces are climate change and biodiversity loss. We are entering a pivotal decade for both the international biodiversity and climate change agendas with the sharpening of ambitious strategies and targets by the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Within their respective Conventions, the biodiversity and climate interlinked challenges have largely been addressed separately. There is evidence that conservation actions that halt, slow or reverse biodiversity loss can simultaneously slow anthropogenic mediated climate change significantly. This review highlights conservation actions which have the largest potential for mitigation of climate change. We note that conservation actions have mainly synergistic benefits and few antagonistic trade-offs with climate change mitigation. Specifically, we identify direct co-benefits in 14 out of the 21 action targets of the draft post-2020 global biodiversity framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity, notwithstanding the many indirect links that can also support both biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. These relationships are context and scale-dependent; therefore, we showcase examples of local biodiversity conservation actions that can be incentivized, guided and prioritized by global objectives and targets. The close interlinkages between biodiversity, climate change mitigation, other nature's contributions to people and good quality of life are seldom as integrated as they should be in management and policy. This review aims to re-emphasize the vital relationships between biodiversity conservation actions and climate change mitigation in a timely manner, in support to major Conferences of Parties that are about to negotiate strategic frameworks and international goals for the decades to come.

Each year, Future Earth, the Earth League and the World Climate Research Programme gather leading scholars from around the world to review the most pressing findings in climate research. The result is the 10 New Insights in Climate Science, delivered as two self-standing products: a peer-reviewed scientific article and this policy report providing a rich and valuable synthesis for policymakers and society at large. The scientific evidence underpinning this year’s report was published between January 2022–June 2023. For policymakers responding to the urgent challenge of the climate crisis, the 10 New Insights in Climate Science 2023/2024 offers credible guidance through 2024 and beyond.

The Mediterranean Sea ranks among the most overexploited and fastest-warming ocean regions. This situation calls for urgent development of global change scenarios and models of marine biodiversity to anticipate changes and support ecosystem-based management strategies across the entire Mediterranean Sea. Using a new end-to-end modelling chain for the whole Mediterranean Sea, we explored the potential effects of changes in fishing pressure on marine resources and ecosystem structure and functioning under a worst-case climate change scenario (RCP8.5). We found that a decrease in fishing mortality or an improvement in fishing selectivity could increase the total biomass and total catch of high trophic level species by the middle and end of the 21st century, especially the biomass of demersal, large pelagic and benthic species, thereby reversing the projected climate-induced decrease in their biomass and catch by the end of the century in the western Mediterranean basin. In contrast, climate change could offer opportunities for some eastern Mediterranean fisheries to increase catches of thermophilic and/or exotic species benefiting from new favourable environmental conditions. Based on a suite of ecological indicators, our results indicated clear positive effects of a more sustainable fisheries management on ecosystem structure and functioning. However, a decrease in fishing pressure may not fully compensate for climate-induced changes on marine resources and ecosystems, but rather buffer some projected negative impacts. Our study highlights the need for a more sustainable exploitation of fisheries resources to restore marine ecosystems and increase their resilience in a global change context.

In the last decade, marine ecosystem models have been increasingly used to project interspecific biodiversity under various global change and management scenarios, considering ecological dynamics only. However, fish populations may also adapt to climate and fishing pressures, via evolutionary changes, leading to modifications in their life-history that could either mitigate or worsen, or even make irreversible, the impacts of these pressures. Building on the multispecies individual-based model Bioen-OSMOSE, an eco-evolutionary fish community model, Ev-Osmose, has been developed to account for evolutionary dynamics together with physiological and ecological dynamics in fish diversity projections. A gametic inheritance module describing the individuals’ genetic structure has been implemented. The genetic structure is defined by finite numbers of loci and alleles per locus that determine the genetic variability of growth, maturation and reproductive effort. Climate change and fishing activities will generate selection pressures on fish life-history traits that will respond through microevolution. This paper is an overview of the Ev-OSMOSE model. To illustrate the ability of the Ev-OSMOSE model to represent realistic fish community dynamics, genotypic and phenotypic traits’ mean and variance and consistent evolutionary patterns, we applied the model to the North Sea ecosystem. The simulated outputs are confronted to observed data of commercial catch, maturity ogives and length at age and to estimates of biomass for each modeled species. In addition to the evaluation of their mean value, the emerging traits’ variability is confronted to length-at-age and maturity data. To ensure the consistency of genetic inheritance and the resulting evolutionary patterns, we assessed the transmission of traits’ genotypic value across cohorts. Overall, the state of the modelled ecosystem was convincing at all these different biological levels. These results open perspectives for using E

The spatial extent of marine and terrestrial protected areas (PAs) was amongst the most intensely debated issues prior to the decision about the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Positive impacts of PAs on habitats, species diversity and abundance are well documented. Yet, biodiversity loss continues unabated despite efforts to protect 17% of land and 10% of the oceans by 2020. This casts doubt on whether extending PAs to 30%, the agreed target in the Kunming-Montreal GBF, will indeed achieve meaningful biodiversity benefits. Critically, the focus on area coverage obscures the importance of PA effectiveness and overlooks concerns about the impact of PAs on other sustainability objectives. We propose a simple means of assessing and visualising the complex relationships between PA area coverage and effectiveness and their effects on biodiversity conservation, nature-based climate mitigation and food production. Our analysis illustrates how achieving a 30% PA global target could be beneficial for biodiversity and climate. It also highlights important caveats: i) achieving lofty area coverage objectives alone will be of little benefit without concomitant improvements in effectiveness, ii) trade-offs with food production particularly for high levels of coverage and effectiveness are likely and iii) important differences in terrestrial and marine systems need to be recognized when setting and implementing PA targets. The CBD's call for a significant increase in protected area will need to be accompanied by clear PA effectiveness goals to reduce and revert dangerous anthropogenic impacts on socio-ecological systems and biodiversity.

Balanced harvest (BH) proposes moderate fishing mortality rates across all species or sizes in proportion to productivity, serving as a possible strategy for ecosystem-based fisheries management. Fishing patterns in some developing countries (e.g. China, the largest producer of seafood) closely resemble BH, where catches have been highly diversified by unselective gears due to market demand for almost all species. In this study, we employed an OSMOSE ecosystem model developed for the Yellow Sea in China to investigate the potential occurrences and advantages of BH in this region with highly exploited multispecies fisheries. Simulations were carried out under four types of fishing scenarios, where various levels of fishing mortality rates for all species or specific functional groups were implemented. Results indicated that the occurrences of BH depended on fishing pressure and targeted functional groups, and that size-level BH was significantly correlated with biomass and yield for most species. In particular, varying fishing pressure for certain functional groups resulted in BH, which produced a high yield for specific species and ensured their biomass sustainability. We concluded that the benefits of BH could be potentially achieved by adjusting fishing pressure for certain functional groups based on the existing fishing pattern in over-exploited ecosystems.

Earth System Models (ESMs) are the primary tool for understanding the impacts of global change and several ESMs are updated on a regular basis to provide more reliable scenarios of the future. However, the confrontation of ESMs outputs to observations reveals biases that are important to correct, especially for impact applications where the absolute scale of the environmental variable is as relevant as its trends. In addition, regional impact studies need fine scale projections to devise strategic planning and management measures. Statistical downscaling provides a fast way to produce regional ocean forcing from ESMs and can additionally produce bias-corrected outputs, which are necessary for impact applications driven by or fitted to observed data, like many ecological models. Statistical downscaling can make use of different parametric distributions depending on the variables used, and generalized regression can provide a flexible approach for this purpose. We propose a multi-model approach based on non-parametric generalized regression and a suite of indicators to select a robust statistical downscaling model that can be used for projection of future scenarios. The empirical cumulative distribution of the variables to downscale is modeled, ensuring that not only the mean but also the variance and quantiles (including the minima and maxima) are properly represented, improving the prediction of extreme events and taking into account spatial autocorrelation. The approach presented here is applied to two contrasted regional case studies, the Bay of Biscay-Celtic Sea ecosystem and the Northern Peru Current ecosystem, using the Sea Surface Temperature from the IPSL-CM5A-LR ESM. The results showed that a multimodel selection approach is appropriate as individual model performance is case specific.

The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) is a heuristic tool for co-creating positive futures for nature and people. It seeks to open up a diversity of futures through mainly three value perspectives on nature – Nature for Nature, Nature for Society, and Nature as Culture. This paper describes how the NFF can be applied in modelling to support decision-making. First, we describe key considerations for the NFF in developing qualitative and quantitative scenarios: i) multiple value perspectives on nature as a state space where pathways improving nature toward a frontier can be represented, ii) mutually reinforcing key feedbacks of social-ecological systems that are important for nature conservation and human wellbeing, iii) indicators of multiple knowledge systems describing the evolution of complex social-ecological dynamics. We then present three approaches to modelling Nature Futures scenarios in the review, screening, and design phases of policy processes. This paper seeks to facilitate the integration of relational values of nature in models and strengthen modelled linkages across biodiversity, nature's contributions to people, and quality of life.