Mobilising under-utilised low carbon (ULC) land for future agricultural expansion helps minimising further carbon stock loss. This study examined the regency cases in Kalimantan, a carbon loss hotspot, to understand the key factors for mobilising ULC land via narrative interviews with a range of land-use actors and complementary desktop analyses.

This paper develops a framework for improved mainstreaming of ecosystem science in policy and decision-making within a spatial planning context. Ecosystem science is advanced as a collective umbrella to capture a body of work and approaches rooted in social-ecological systems thinking, spawning a distinctive ecosystem terminology: ecosystem approach, ecosystem services, ecosystem services framework and natural capital.

Where rights over natural resources are contested, the effectiveness of conservation may be undermined and it can be difficult to estimate the welfare impacts of conservation restrictions on local people. In particular, researchers face the dilemma of estimating respondents’ Willingness To Pay (WTP) for rights to resources, or their Willingness To Accept (WTA) compensation for foregoing these rights.

Forest conversion in the tropics is increasingly driven by global demand for agricultural forest-risk commodities such as soy, beef, palm oil and timber. In order to be effective, future forest conservation policies should include measures targeting both producers (the supply side) and consumers (the demand side) to address commodity-driven deforestation.

It is undoubtedly a challenge for climate policy actors to identify reliable evidence to support sound decision-making processes for tackling climate issues effectively. Still, differentiating between fact and fiction, well-designed and invalid science, evidence- or interest-based arguments is precisely what determines the quality of climate policies.

Declines in global biodiversity due to land conversion and habitat loss are driving a "Sixth Mass Extinction" and many countries currently fall short of meeting even nominal land protection targets to mitigate this crisis. Here, we quantify the potential contribution of Indigenous lands to biodiversity conservation using case studies of Australia, Brazil and Canada. Indigenous lands in each country are slightly more species rich than existing protected areas and, in Brazil and Canada, support more threatened species than existing protected areas or random sites.