Track Chairs
- Gustavo Nicolas Paez Salamanca. Data and Analytics lead, UNICEF ROSA. email: gn.paez145@uniandes.edu.co
- Dr. Zsuzsanna Marjainé Szerényi. Professor, Institute for Sustainable Development, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary. Email: zsuzsanna.szerenyi@uni-corvinus.hu
Goals and Objectives and Areas of the Track
In 2025, the intertwined crises of climate change and biodiversity loss are no longer abstract projections but measurable realities shaping ecosystems, economies, and human well-being worldwide. Over the past year alone, climate-related floods and droughts have affected more than 200 million people, with severe impacts concentrated in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. Prolonged droughts across the Horn of Africa, Central America, and Southeast Asia have reduced agricultural productivity by up to 30–40% in some regions, intensifying food insecurity and water scarcity, while extreme flooding in South Asia and parts of the Caribbean has displaced millions of people, disproportionately affecting children and vulnerable communities. These impacts reveal how the degradation of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems amplifies climate risks by undermining ecosystem services such as water regulation, soil stabilization, carbon sequestration, and coastal protection.
Against this backdrop, the global community approaches a decisive political moment following the adoption of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and renewed international engagement around the 30×30 target, which commits countries to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and ocean by 2030. As of 2025, more than 110 countries have pledged to this objective, collectively implying the protection of approximately 40 million km² of terrestrial ecosystems and nearly 110 million km² of marine and coastal areas. Several countries have already translated these commitments into action, expanding marine protected areas by millions of hectares and establishing ecological corridors that reconnect fragmented landscapes with community-managed and Indigenous territories.
Crucially, this moment of urgency is also marked by verifiable ecological recovery where long-term protection and restoration have been sustained. The gray wolf (Canis lupus), once classified as Endangered in much of Western Europe and the United States, has recovered sufficiently in several regions to be reclassified as Least Concern at the global level, with populations increasing from a few thousand individuals in the 1970s to over 60,000 today. Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), reduced to less than 10% of their pre-industrial population and listed as Endangered in the late 20th century, are now classified as Least Concern globally, with some Southern Hemisphere populations recovering to more than 60–70% of historical abundance. Similarly, conservation efforts have enabled the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) to move from Endangered to Vulnerable, supported by habitat protection and reforestation across more than 1.4 million hectares in China. In marine systems, several green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) populations have shifted from Endangered to Vulnerable or Near Threatened at regional scales, with nesting numbers in parts of the Caribbean more than doubling since the 1980s. Parallel to species recovery, global restoration initiatives have contributed to the rehabilitation of over 350 million hectares of degraded land, improving biodiversity, strengthening ecosystem services, and enhancing carbon sink capacity.
Despite these gains, progress remains uneven and politically fragile. While scientific evidence increasingly highlights ecosystem services and nature-based solutions as cost-effective strategies for climate mitigation, adaptation, and disaster risk reduction, financial and institutional support is increasingly uncertain. In particular, declining willingness among some high-income countries, including the United States, to sustain or expand investments in UN agencies and multilateral environmental frameworks threatens the long-term implementation of biodiversity and climate commitments. This widening gap between ecological ambition and political resolve raises critical questions about governance, equity, and the durability of international cooperation.
Within this context of accelerating risk and conditional optimism, this track advances ecosystem services as a unifying framework to analyze how societies are responding to environmental change across scales. Contributions are invited to examine the current state of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and to assess how conservation, restoration, and nature-based solutions are being designed, implemented, and governed at community, national, and international levels. By evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of these approaches across different institutional and spatial contexts, the track seeks to identify best practices, trade-offs, and systemic barriers shaping the capacity of ecosystems to function as sustainable sinks, buffers, and sources of resilience. In doing so, it aims to generate methodological innovation and policy-relevant insights that contribute to transforming global environmental challenges into sustainable opportunities through collaboration and partnership.
Length and content of the proposed abstract to the track
Each proposed abstract (in connection to an area pointed out above) of between 300 and 500 words (including all aspects),
- shall be best organized (without headlines) along usual structures (e.g. intro/method/findings or results/ discussion/conclusions)
- does not need to, but can include references
- shall provide in a final section
a. to which SDG(s) and SDG-target(s) their proposed abstract especially relate to (e.g. “SDG+Target: 14.1.”).
b. a brief indication how the proposed contribution relates to the topic of the Conference “Transforming global challenges into Sustainable Opportunities: Collaborations and Partnerships across the globe“
Abstracts which do not outline points 3.a.) AND 3.b.) might be considered less relevant in the Review.
Potential publication channels
With regard to potential publications, depending on the number and quality of contributions the following publication opportunities have already been envisaged:
- Ecosystem Services (https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/ecosystem-services). Impact factor: 6,3.
- Resources, Environment and Sustainability (https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/Resources-Environment-and-Sustainability). A recent (2020) journal