Socio-environmental conflicts associated with large-scale economic projects in Indigenous territories are well documented, but conflicts in coastal areas remain largely unexplored, despite the crucial differences between inland and coastal ecosystems. While the empirical literature about socio-environmental conflicts in Indigenous territories in coastal areas is growing, the role of financial institutions and corporations in t...

As the coverage of area‐based conservation increases across the globe, it is critical to improve understanding of the social and ecological outcomes of such measures and the pathways to their outcomes. A social–ecological systems approach to monitoring and evaluation is increasingly advocated; yet, applications remain scarce. We sought to facilitate operationalization of this approach through prioritization of indicators when...

Conservation is an inherently social process—people collectively endeavor to enact conservation. Yet, in conservation social science, research methodologies, training, and competency are less common than in natural sciences. Globally, formal education and training in the social sciences are often unavailable or inaccessible to conservation practitioners, and nonformal education may help fill this gap. To identify potential opp...

Inequity is ubiquitous in the ocean, and social equity receives insufficient attention in ocean governance and management efforts. Thus, we assert that proponents of sustainability must center social equity in future ocean governance, to address past social and environmental injustices, to align with international law and conservation policy, and to realize objectives of sustainability. This obligation applies across all marin...

Motivation Pollinators play a crucial role in maintaining Earth's terrestrial biodiversity. However, rapid human‐induced environmental changes are compromising the long‐term persistence of plant‐pollinator interactions. Unfortunately, we lack robust, generalisable data capturing how plant‐pollinator communities are structured across space and time. Here, we present the EuPPollNet (European Plant‐Pollinator Networks) database,...

Effective governance is crucial for the success of conservation projects aimed at protecting wildlife populations and supporting human well‐being. However, few large‐scale, comprehensive syntheses have been conducted on the effects of different environmental governance types on conservation outcomes (i.e., biological and ecological effectiveness or effects of conservation on human well‐being), and clarity on the quantity and q...

Monitoring the governance and management effectiveness of area‐based conservation has long been recognized as an important foundation for achieving national and global biodiversity goals and enabling adaptive management. However, there are still many barriers that prevent conservation actors, including those affected by governance and management systems from implementing conservation activities and programs and from gathering...

Privately protected areas (PPAs) are a potentially innovative conservation tool. Legal recognition is necessary for their success, especially where there are institutional challenges to nature conservation, such as in South America. Although PPAs have increased in South America since the early 2000s, there is a critical information gap pertaining to their legal frameworks. We analyzed the level of landowner commitment to and g...

Two pressing and overlapping marine policy issues are related to human rights in the ocean and the situation of ocean defenders. Human rights issues and violations are on the rise in the ocean due to the ongoing, rapid and unchecked escalation of anthropogenic activities in marine and coastal environments, which increasingly undermine the fundamental, civil and political, economic, social, cultural or environmental rights of i...

The knowledge‐action gap in conservation science and practice occurs when research outputs do not result in actions to protect or restore biodiversity. Among the diverse and complex reasons for this gap, three barriers are fundamental: knowledge is often unavailable to practitioners and challenging to interpret or difficult to use or both. Problems of availability, interpretability, and useability are solvable with open scienc...

Marine conservation design and fisheries management are increasingly integrating biophysical, socio-economic and governance considerations. Integrative approaches are adopted to achieve more effective, equitable, inclusive, and robust marine policies and practices. This paper describes a participatory process to co-produce biophysical, socio-economic, and governance principles to guide the design and management of marine reser...

Crimes at sea—blue crimes—can have devastating impacts on small‐scale fishing communities. Increasing calls to address “blue crimes” demand more research to address the drivers, patterns, actors and impacts of criminal activities in society and the oceans. This research and policy agenda, however, is not without risks as it might impact individual small‐scale fishers and their communities, exacerbate existing inequalities and...