ABSTRACT
The world is grappling with a wide range of socio-ecological challenges triggered by the interwoven impacts of land-use change and climate change. Fear, alarmism, guilt, and shame are all possible responses to these challenges, but they are unlikely to be effective in motivating the large-scale and long-term change needed to address these challenges. Currently, there is a plethora of information about the impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, intensive agriculture, and rapid urbanization; and scientists have depicted and/or documented the magnitude and extensiveness of these impacts on the Earth’s abiotic, biotic, and cultural resources. Despite this plethora of information, action and change are too slow. There is a need for more focus on innovative, feasible, and flexible solutions to create resilient landscapes in the face of climate change. The change from dysfunctionality to multifunctionality; from defenselessness to resilience, requires a comprehensive, multidimensional transformation. Given this, there is an urgent need for finding processes through which human communities learn how to use their landscapes to better interact and coexist with the natural capital (i.e., abiotic and biotic resources), while understanding the evolving nature of ecological patterns and processes under a changing climate.
