These 10 facts synthesized from LSS constitute hard truths that help to delineate the key challenges but also provide major opportunities for governing land systems for sustainability. Achieving sustainability through land systems is challenging precisely because multiple beliefs and values exist; because land systems are complex, with irreversibility and path dependence, large impacts of land uses with small footprints, and distant spillovers; because we live on a used planet where trade-offs are prevalent, claims are overlapping and contested, and benefits from land are unequally distributed; and because actors mobilize multiple, sometimes conflicting, visions of justice.

Avoiding irreversible negative impacts is always preferable, but beyond this, progressing toward sustainability through land use is often about negotiating fair and acceptable trade-offs and compensations, rather than about achieving optimal outcomes, or stable peace among actors.

These facts do not provide simple answers to current land-related debates on how to manage trade-offs and synergies, how to organize the multifunctionality of land systems across places and scales, and how to set up fair procedures and distribution of land benefits. However, they do point to how answers could be developed and provide common ground for science and policy, as well as a research agenda. We hope that acknowledging these facts and their implications can help to build more solid foundations for much-needed conversations on land use and sustainability.

A new report released today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) is a call to action for policymakers worldwide seeking to develop sustainable and equitable solutions to our most urgent global challenges. “Ten Facts about Land Systems for Sustainability” was co-authored by 50 leading land use scientists from 20 countries. A companion report offers specific examples to help policymakers and the public understand what’s at stake at this critical moment in global development. “Global agreements on climate change, biodiversity, and development are increasingly focused on land management as the solution to a long list of challenges,” said Ariane de Bremond, Executive Officer of the Global Land Programme, which convened the authors to develop the study. “There is a real urgency for decision makers to understand that meeting our sustainable development goals in a way that’s equitable will require policies that account for the ten facts explained in the study.”