Pathways towards a sustainable future envisioned by early‐career conservation researchers

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Pathways towards a sustainable future envisioned by early‐career conservation researchers © 2021 the Authors Published version Raatikainen, Kaisa J.; Purhonen, Jenna; Pohjanmies, Tähti; Peura, Maiju; Nieminen, Eini; Mustajärvi, Linda; Helle, Ilona; Shennan-Farpón, Yara; Ahti, Pauliina A.; Basile, Marco; Bernardo, Nicola; Bertram, Michael G.; Bouarakia, Oussam; Brias-Guinart, Aina; Fijen, Thijs; Froidevaux, Jérémy S. P.; Hemmingmoore, Heather; Hocevar, Sara; Kendall, Liam; Lampinen, Jussi; Marjakangas, Emma-Liina; Martin, Jake M.; Oomen, Rebekah A.; Segre, Hila; Sidemo-Holm, William; Silva, André P.; Thorbjørnsen, Susanna Huneide; TorrentsTicó, Miquel; Zhang, Di; Ziemacki, Jasmin Raatikainen, K. J., Purhonen, J., Pohjanmies, T., Peura, M., Nieminen, E., Mustajärvi, L., Helle, I., Shennan-Farpón, Y., Ahti, P. A., Basile, M., Bernardo, N., Bertram, M. G., Bouarakia, O., BriasGuinart, A., Fijen, T., Froidevaux, J. S. P., Hemmingmoore, H., Hocevar, S., Kendall, L., . . . Ziemacki, J. (2021). Pathways towards a sustainable future envisioned by early‐career conservation researchers. Conservation Science and Practice, 3(9), Article e493. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.493 2021 CONTRIBUTED PAPER Pathways towards a sustainable future envisioned by earlycareer conservation researchers Kaisa J. Raatikainen 1,2 | Jenna Purhonen 3 | Tähti Pohjanmies 2,4 | Maiju Peura 2 | Eini Nieminen 2 | Linda Mustajärvi 2 | Ilona Helle 2 | Yara Shennan-Farp on 5,6 | Pauliina A. Ahti 2,7 | Marco Basile 8,9,10 | Nicola Bernardo 11 | Michael G. Bertram 12,13 | Oussama Bouarakia 14,15,16 | Aina Brias-Guinart 17 | Thijs Fijen 18 | Jérémy S. P. Froidevaux 19,20,21,22 | Heather Hemmingmoore 23 | Sara Hocevar 2 | Liam Kendall 24,25 | Jussi Lampinen 26 | Emma-Liina Marjakangas 27,28 | Jake M. Martin 13 | Rebekah A. Oomen 29,30,31 | Hila Segre 32 | William Sidemo-Holm 24 | André P. Silva 33,34 | Susanna Huneide Thorbjørnsen 30 | Miquel Torrents-Tic o 17 | Di Zhang 35 | Jasmin Ziemacki 36 1 Department of Geography and Geology, Geography Section, University of Turku, Turku, Finland 2 Department of Biological and Environmental Science & School of Resource Wisdom, University of Jyvaskyla, Jyväskylä, Finland 3 Department of Music, Art and Cultural Studies, Department of Biological and Environmental Science & School of Resource Wisdom, University of Jyvaskyla, Jyväskylä, Finland 4 Natural Resources Institute Finland, Helsinki, Finland 5 ZSL Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, London, UK 6 UCL Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, UK 7 Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK 8 Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland 9 Swiss Ornithological Institute, Sempach, Switzerland 10 Chair of Wildlife Ecology and Management, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany 11 Doñana Biological Station –CSIC, Sevilla, Spain 12 Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Environmental Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden 13 School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia 14 SARChI Chair on Biodiversity Value and Change, University of Venda, Thohoyandou, South Africa 15 Laboratory Biodiversity Ecology Genome, Research Center BIOBIO, Faculty of Sciences, Mohammed V University in Rabat, Rabat, Morocco 16 Institut Systématique Evolution Biodiversité, MNHN, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France 17 Faculty of Biological and Environmental Science & Faculty of Social Sciences, Global Change and Conservation Lab, University of Helsinki, Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, Helsinki, Finland 18 Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands 19 Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, Biological and Environmental Sciences, Stirling, UK 20 University of Bristol, School of Biological Sciences, Bristol, UK 21 Centre d'Ecologie et des Sciences de la Conservation (CESCO, UMR 7204), CNRS, MNHN, Sorbonne-Université, Station marine, Concarneau, France Received: 1 June 2020 Revised: 14 June 2021 Accepted: 23 June 2021 DOI: 10.1111/csp2.493 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2021 The Authors. Conservation Science and Practice published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology Conservation Science and Practice. 2021;e493. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/csp2 1of15 https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.493 22 Dynafor, Université de Toulouse, INRA, INPT, INP-EI Purpan, Castanet-Tolosan, France 23 Grimsö Wildlife Research Station, Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Riddarhyttan, Sweden 24 Centre for Environmental and Climate Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden 25 University of New England, School of Environmental and Rural Science, Armidale, NSW, Australia 26 Department of Biology & Biodiversity Research Unit, University of Turku, Turku, Finland 27 Centre for Biodiversity Dynamics, Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway 28 The Helsinki Lab of Ornithology, Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland 29 Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway 30 Centre for Coastal Research, Department of Natural Sciences, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway 31 Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada 32 Human and Biodiversity Research Lab, Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion –Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel 33 Department of Animal Ecology, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden 34 Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal 35 School of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China 36 Center for Development Research, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany Correspondence Kaisa J. Raatikainen, Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyvaskyla, School of Resource Wisdom, P.O. Box 35, FI-40014 University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. Email: [email protected] Funding information “la Caixa”Banking Foundation; Australian Government Research Training Program; Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; Emil Aaltosen Säätiö; James S. McDonnell Foundation; Koneen Säätiö; NSERC Discovery Grant; Suomen Kulttuurirahasto Abstract Scientists have warned decision-makers about the severe consequences of the global environmental crisis since the 1970s. Yet ecological degradation continues and little has been done to address climate change. We investigated early-career conservation researchers' (ECR) perspectives on, and prioritization of, actions furthering sustainability. We conducted a survey (n=67) and an interactive workshop (n=35) for ECR attendees of the 5th European Congress of Conservation Biology (2018). Building on these data and discussions, we identified ongoing and forthcoming advances in conservation science. These include increased transdisciplinarity, science communication, advocacy in conservation, and adoption of a transformation-oriented social–ecological systems approach to research. The respondents and participants had diverse perspectives on how to achieve sustainability. Reformist actions were emphasized as paving the way for more radical changes in the economic system and societal values linked to the environment and inequality. Our findings suggest that achieving sustainability requires a strategy that (1) incorporates the multiplicity of people's views, (2) places a greater value on nature, and (3) encourages systemic transformation across political, social, educational, and economic realms on multiple levels. We introduce a framework for ECRs to inspire their research and practice within conservation science to achieve real change in protecting biological diversity. KEYWORDS Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, climate change, global change, leverage points, new conservation, radicalism, reformism, sustainability, world Scientists' warning to humanity 1|INTRODUCTION The frequency and severity of dire messages concerning the state of the Earth have escalated over the past decades. Scientists have produced repeated evidence to quantify the magnitude of increasing degradation of the environment and climate change (e.g., Barnosky et al., 2012; IPBES, 2019; Newbold et al., 2015; Rands 2of15 RAATIKAINEN ET AL. et al., 2010; Ripple, Wolf, & Newsome, 2019), including unprecedented rates of species loss (IPBES, 2019), mass coral bleaching (Sully, Burkepile, Donovan, Hodgson, & van Woesik, 2019), drastic increases in pollution in aquatic environments (Eerkes-Medrano, Leslie, & Quinn, 2019; Lindeque et al., 2020; Saaristo et al., 2018), and worldwide changes in insect abundance (Wagner, Grames, Forister, Berenbaum, & Stopak, 2021). Following the Rio Summit of 1992 (UNCEP, 1992), the Union of Concerned Scientists published the first “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity,”cautioning that human population growth and profligate use of natural resources were shifting the state of the Earth's systems towards a scenario detrimental to human well-being and the survival of many species (Union of Concerned Scientists, 1993). Broadly understood as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”(United Nations, 2020; WCED, 1987), sustainable development and the associated UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been widely incorporated into policy and private sector decision-making to guide societies towards more sustainable paths (Adams, 2020). However, the interventions made have been unable to lever a transformative change towards sustainability, both in societies and in research (Abson et al., 2017; Reyers & Selig, 2020). In 2017, the globally acknowledged “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice”(Ripple et al., 2017) highlighted that, with the exception of stabilising the stratospheric ozone layer, humanity has failed to solve our major environmental challenges. Instead, most of the challenges identified in the first “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity”(1993) have intensified (Ripple et al., 2017, 2019). In this regard, anthropogenic factors such as agricultural intensification (Zabel et al., 2019), unsustainable extraction of natural resources (IPBES, 2019), and the expansion of invasive species (Szabo, Khwaja, Garnett, & Butchart, 2012) continue to drive biodiversity loss. It is thus not surprising that conservation researchers, as practitioners working towards long-term protection of biodiversity, are extremely concerned about the global ecological crisis and the lack of progress in effectuating its counteractions (Adams, 2020; Soulé, 1985). For early-career conservation researchers (hereafter, ECRs), it is further troubling that their voices are often not involved in building the solutions for a more sustainable future (Rana et al., 2020). Public conservation discussions need accounts from marginalized groups (Milner-Guilland, 2021). Hence, the current paper, collaboratively written by 30 ECRs, aims to capture voices from this group and explore potential innovations that incorporate conservation perspectives to aid the transition towards sustainability. Western environmentalism and conservation movements arose throughout the 1960s and 1970s, mostly across North America and Europe, holding species protection as their flagship. The 1990s saw a merging of conservation and sustainability thinking under the umbrella of sustainable development, which broke through other sectors of society, such as business, governance, and education, in many parts of the world (Adams, 2020). Thus, most ECRs have grown up with a belief that the global environmental crisis can be ameliorated with sustainable development, an ideology that gained traction and mainstream recognition throughout the 1990s following the publication of Our Common Future (WCED, 1987), Agenda 21 as the main output of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, and the first and second IPCC Assessment Reports (Adams, 2020). After their establishment in 2015, the SDGs have become central to the development and teaching of conservation science, along with other international protection targets and policies (Adams, 2020; IPBES, 2019). In parallel, social sciences have gained ground within conservation research and are now recognized as a source of new solutions (Bennett et al., 2016, 2017; Soulé, 1985). Building on the cumulative and increasingly interdisciplinary work done by previous generations of conservation scientists, as well as on education and the everyday emotional engagement with environmental issues (Adams, 2020; Bennett et al., 2016; Carmi, Arnon, & Orion, 2015), ECRs have great potential to create novel, holistic visions that challenge the prevalent socio-political interpretation of sustainability (Rana et al., 2020). Tasked with developing innovative solutions to the global environmental crisis, and in light of the lack of progress on halting environmental degradation, our study evaluates the list of evidence-based “sustainability actions” presented by Ripple et al. (2017) (Table 1), and asks: Which sustainability actions do ECRs prioritize today? Further, our broader interest was to go beyond Ripple et al. (2017), asking: Are there additional steps towards sustainability that emerge from ECR innovation? We brought together a group of ECRs to reflect on the roles of society, politics, and the economy in shaping environmental change. We discuss the differences and similarities among ECRs' views, while critically assessing our role and position within society. We emphasize the potential of socially oriented approaches in solving the biodiversity crisis, including participatory research, socio-political movements, and degrowth (e.g., Adams, 2020; Bennett et al., 2017; Kallis, Kerschner, & Martinez-Alier, 2012). Further, we present potential pathways and a framework of priority steps to push for real change towards sustainability. Hence, this article is targeted at researchers and practitioners of conservation and sustainability, and specifically other ECRs. Our methodology is built on a RAATIKAINEN ET AL.3of15 bottom-up approach that is repeatable for other groups of participants. We hope to evoke broader discussion on ways to advance sustainability that combine conservation with cultural, geopolitical, and economic viewpoints. 2|METHODS 2.1 |Data collection ECR perspectives were collected through a survey and workshop discussions (Figure 1). In May 2018, a web survey was sent to all graduate students (i.e., doctoral students and year 2018 doctoral graduates) registered to the 5th European Congress of Conservation Biology (ECCB2018; 12th–15th of June 2018, Jyväskylä, Finland). The survey included four questions on each respondent's background (details in Supporting Information). Next, Ripple et al.'s (2017) thirteen sustainability actions were provided and the respondents were asked to choose the three most important actions, from their own perspective (see Figure 2). The respondents could also suggest additional actions and write comments. Preliminary results from the survey data were derived prior to the workshop. The respondents' background information was summarized, and the textual answers were thematically grouped by two organizers. The resulting seven themes were given preliminary headings in order to provide a basis for group discussions in the workshop (Table S1). A participatory workshop was held at ECCB2018 in which 35 participants further discussed how a change towards a more sustainable world could be supported. The workshop was divided into three rounds of 20 min group discussions with 3–7 people in each group. With each new round, the participants changed groups and chose one of the seven themes. The participants were advised to “consider new and practice-oriented ideas for moving towards a more sustainable world as researchers” relevant to the allocated theme. Participants provided written notes about the proposed ideas and solutions answering the question: “What should ECRs avoid, be careful about, and focus on while continuing their scientific careers with the aim of guiding or advancing sustainability?”Theme-wise survey responses were provided as printouts to be used as starting points for the discussion, if needed. After the final discussion round, each group TABLE 1 Actions humanity can take to transition to sustainability, not in order of importance or urgency (according to Ripple et al., 2017). To ease reading, short descriptions are referred to in Section 3 of the current article; the data were collected using the original wording of each action Sustainability action Short description Prioritizing the enactment of connected well-funded and well-managed reserves for a significant proportion of the world's terrestrial, marine, freshwater, and aerial habitats. Reserves Maintaining nature's ecosystem services by halting the conversion of forests, grasslands, and other native habitats. Halting conversion Restoring native plant communities at large scales, particularly forest landscapes. Restoration Rewilding regions with native species, especially apex predators, to restore ecological processes and dynamics. Rewilding Developing and adopting adequate policy instruments to remedy defaunation, the poaching crisis, and the exploitation and trade of threatened species. Remedy defaunation Reducing food waste through education and better infrastructure. Reducing food waste Promoting dietary shifts towards mostly plant-based foods. Plant-based foods Further reducing fertility rates by ensuring that women and men have access to education and voluntary family-planning services, especially where such resources are still lacking. Reducing fertility rates Increasing outdoor nature education for children, as well as the overall engagement of society in the appreciation of nature. Appreciation of nature Divesting of monetary investments and purchases to encourage positive environmental change. Divesting of monetary investments and purchases Devising and promoting new green technologies and massively adopting renewable energy sources while phasing out subsidies to energy production through fossil fuels. Green technologies Revising our economy to reduce wealth inequality and ensure that prices, taxation, and incentive systems take into account the real costs which consumption patterns impose on our environment. Revising the economy Estimating a scientifically defensible, sustainable human population size for the long term while rallying nations and leaders to support that vital goal. Human population size 4of15 RAATIKAINEN ET AL. FIGURE 1 Flowchart describing the mixed-methods approach used in this study. The research process started with a quantitative scrutinization of known sustainability actions as presented by Ripple et al. (2017) (on the left side of the figure). In parallel, emerging complementary steps towards sustainability were investigated qualitatively (on the right). Detailed descriptions of data collection, the data, and analyses are available in Supporting Information FIGURE 2 The perceived importance of Ripple et al.'s (2017) 13 actions towards sustainability as ranked by survey respondents (n=67). The bars show the percentage of votes given to each action, with each respondent having voted for three actions. Bars are categorized into three main action types by the authors of the current article. Seven pairs of actions were rarely prioritized together, indicating resistance among certain actions. These non-random negative associations are shown with line connectors. The width of the horizontal line signifies the number of negative associations (3, 2, or 1; from the thickest to the narrowest lines, respectively) for the corresponding action. The vertical lines connect the resistant actions to each other RAATIKAINEN ET AL.5of15 provided a short summary of their current theme, based on the available material produced during all discussion rounds. The workshop outcomes were documented for qualitative analysis by collecting and photographing the written notes, and by audio-recording the summaries, with the informed consent of the participants. All participants were given the opportunity to contribute to the qualitative analysis of the workshop documentation and the writing process of the current paper. Data collection and analyses were conducted in accordance with the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (ALLEA, 2017), the Ethical Principles of Research with Human Participants in Finland (TENK, 2018), and the recommendations of the General Data Protection Regulation. The Ethical Committee of the University of Jyväskylä assessed on September 5th 2019 that the current study does not require an ethical review and statement of the committee. Both the surveyed action rankings and the workshop documents were examined, and we refer to the survey and workshop contributors as “respondents”and “participants,”respectively. As most authors took part in the survey and all attended the workshop, derived arguments are discussed in the first-person. 2.2 |Quantitative and qualitative analyses We conducted quantitative analyses to find potential patterns within Ripple et al.'s (2017) actions as ranked by the survey respondents. We calculated the average dissimilarity among the selections by computing a matrix of pairwise dissimilarities using the function vegdist of the vegan package for R 3.5.0 (Oksanen et al., 2018; R Core Team, 2018), and then calculated the average over unique pairs of rankings. Furthermore, we tested nonrandom co-occurrence of the actions with the function cooccur from the cooccur package (Griffith, Veech, & Marsh, 2016). The output of this method indicates whether certain pairs of actions co-occurred in the rankings significantly more or less frequently than expected. We analyzed the content of the qualitative material, that is, textual survey answers, transcripts, photographs, and theme-specific notes, under the workshop themes (following Holliday, 2007; Elo & Kyngäs, 2008). Groups of 3–5 authors read through the material and documented analytical thoughts, interpretations, and subjective summaries of the textual data as additional writing. We produced concise summaries of each theme, using three guiding questions to derive and explore each of the topics: (1) Which global perspectives emerged that are not acknowledged by “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice?”, (2) Which topics should conservation science focus on and how should the research be carried out?, and (3) What is the role of researchers in the future? Details on the analyses are included in Supporting Information. Finally, the findings were drawn together by detecting key steps that complement Ripple et al.'s (2017) action list. The emergent framework of sustainability steps was organized in relation to the workshop themes and according to a varying level of reformism or radicalism. We utilized the leverage points framework (Abson et al., 2017; Meadows, 1999) to relate our results to existing theoretical literature on sustainability interventions. 3|RESULTS 3.1 |Survey: Prioritization of the known sustainability actions A total of 68 respondents (out of 139 graduate students that had registered to ECCB2018) contributed to the survey. One respondent was removed, as they did not meet the criteria of an ECR, leaving a response rate of 47.9% (n=67). A total of 54% of respondents had received or anticipated to receive their doctorate either in 2018 or 2019, with others planning to graduate later (summarized in Figure S1). Of the respondents, 76% had a natural sciences background, 9% a social sciences background, and 15% a multidisciplinary background. The mean age of the respondents was 30 years (min. 24, max. 44 years, n=67). All actions received votes in the survey (Figure 2). Yet there were differences in their relative support, as exemplified by the following comment: “All 13 actions humanity can take to transition to sustainability are relevant. However, we should primarily prioritize the most achievable rather than the most important ones”(respondent 32). Although the respondents used different logic in their rankings, the two most valued actions represented a more conventional course, with the first being establishing reserves and the second being promoting green technologies. The third most valued action encouraged revising the economy. Based on pairwise comparisons, the respondents prioritized different combinations of actions. The cooccurrence analysis further revealed that, on average, any two respondents prioritized one shared action, but prioritized the other two actions differently (respondents dissimilarity =0.69). The majority of pairwise associations followed a random pattern. However, seven pairs of actions occurred together significantly less frequently 6of15 RAATIKAINEN ET AL. than expected (Figure 2, Figure S2). For example, supporting appreciation of nature was rarely voted together with actions on green technologies, halting habitat conversion, or promotion of plant-based foods. 3.2 |Workshop: Discussions of individuals' actions towards global systemic change The aim of the workshop was to develop sustainability steps that extend beyond the actions listed in the survey. The emergent key topics are presented in Figure 3, where they are included into a multi-tier framework of proposed steps. Most of the steps covered multiple levels of agency (individual, discipline, and global), which is illustrated in Figure 3 and exemplified by selected excerpts in Table S2. The starting point of the workshop discussions was the concern over environmental degradation and the urgent need to find solutions to global problems, namely biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution and waste issues. The identified changes were seen as resulting from deeper systemic processes. Participants connected the measurable degrees of global warming (a parametric system character) to drivers on the levels of systemic feedbacks, design, and intent, such as people's lifestyles, transport, and consumerism (Figure 3). Acting upon the root causes was also discussed to decrease waste through minimizing consumption: “There is a big demand on buying less, promoting people to buy less”(excerpt from a thematic summary). In general, participants encouraged several individual-level steps, including favoring sustainable, durable, and local products, having fewer or no children, having fewer pets, reducing flying and other carbonheavy modes of transport, increasing the use of digital communication, and enjoying nearby nature. The synergies between human and ecosystem well-being were highlighted. An overall equalization of ecological burden resulting from people's lifestyles was called for, taking into account the impacts of per capita consumption and population growth, which were seen as important parameters of global change. Pro-environmental choices were seen to be encouraged by an environmentalist attitude that builds on scientific knowledge, and participants strongly advocated for additional training and better resources in science communication. Participants further pointed out that educational reach in environmental matters should go beyond family planning education for adults and outdoor nature education for children. Participants called for everyday learning experiences that would support individuals in building a personal relationship with nature, and noted that the opportunity to develop nature connectedness should be provided for people independent of their background: “It should be normal to get nature education, or FIGURE 3 The sustainability steps emphasized in the ECR workshop (colored bars). The broad discussion themes are shown on the left side of the figure as domains of action. The columns in the middle section show the three levels of agency utilized in the qualitative analysis. The width of the colored bars indicates the applicability of each step in relation to the levels of agency, which were found to be interconnected, as interpreted from the discussions. Some of the steps lie at the border of intervention domains, illustrating thematic overlap in discussions. At the righthand side, the continuum from reformism to radicalism is depicted together with corresponding categories of shallow to deep system characteristics (italicized; according to Abson et al., 2017), according to which the steps are ordered. Many reformist interventions, such as monitoring of species extinction rates, target shallow system properties (e.g., parameters) and are incapable of causing real change in factors driving the system behavior (intent, paradigm). Yet reformist steps combined with more radical ones may launch cascading effects on the system, which is implied by the double-headed arrows RAATIKAINEN ET AL.7of15 when you do it in your spare time […] like, you should not feel being weird for going out watching the birds. We really have to think how we can mainstream doing things in nature”(excerpt from a thematic summary). Conflicting opinions began to emerge when discussions moved into the realm of governance and politics. All workshop participants called for more effective implementation of scientific findings but differing approaches were suggested. Some participants argued that the science community should directly advocate for evidencebased policies to guide or restrict human behavior. Other participants noted that this call for an increasingly larger political role for conservation scientists challenges the aspiration to neutrality and objectiveness as the fundamental basis for credible science, and defended a more traditional, advisory way for scientists to inform society. In addition to proponents of natural scientific evidence, there were participants that valued local and traditional knowledge and highlighted the inclusion of communities, Indigenous peoples, and marginalized groups. These latter participants considered that conservation scientists need to be open to a multiplicity of worldviews, within conservation and beyond. They described research implementation and policy-making as delicate processes of finding common ground among scientists, decisionmakers, and stakeholders, to enable more proactive approaches to solving environmental issues. After the challenges of research outreach and implementation were laid out, concerns arose about the realistic possibilities to engage in this complex process: “How can we actually get involved in the society, communicate our science, talk to or get involved with decision-makers and everything, when we are always running out of funding?” (excerpt from a thematic summary). The overall work burden of individual researchers was seen as highly demanding, including both the actual research and outreach-related tasks. Job security, resource sharing, and increased collaboration were presented as potential solutions. Participants recognized that, to embrace the multiplicity and complexity of both ecosystems and societies, collaboration between disciplines and with people from different social and cultural backgrounds is required. Some participants voiced concerns about the lack of an analytical understanding of values, emotions, thoughts, and motivations that encourage conservation. They considered that collaboration with psychological and social sciences is a prerequisite for advancing sustainable coexistence with nature. Most participants felt they lacked training in social sciences and humanities, pointing out that the current academic system still does not sufficiently encourage crossing disciplinary boundaries. More cautious accounts were also given. For example, it was argued that “multidisciplinarity should not be the goal, it should be a tool”(excerpt from a thematic summary). Some participants stressed that the type of research that is needed differs from traditional conservation science by being simultaneously multidisciplinary, participatory, and holistic: in practice, they referred to transdisciplinary research. It was acknowledged that transdisciplinarity may have an analytical cost due to the broadness of its scope, and that unidisciplinary research remains indispensable as it allows researchers to study certain phenomena in greater depth. A consensus was again achieved when systemic intent was discussed. Intent is defined as the emergent direction or trajectory according to which a system of interest is oriented (Abson et al., 2017). The participants identified economic growth and the culture of selfinterest as widespread driving forces in developed societies and saw them as problematic. People's obsession and right to continue exploiting and overconsuming natural resources was questioned. Several participants repeatedly said that continuing with “business as usual”is not an option: “We cannot live in a more sustainable world in this current economic system. Basically, we need to disconnect from the idea of capitalism and growth as one of the main achievements in our lives”(excerpt from a thematic summary). The current neoliberal market economy, which builds on capitalism and continuous growth in supply and demand, was heavily criticized for exploiting ecosystems and maintaining inequality. Many participants placed the responsibility of the environmental crisis on wealthy countries, which have benefited the most from economic growth and globalization. They called for economic and social equity, both within and between countries. It was also considered important that developed and developing countries' perspectives be addressed in the quest for sustainability. Some participants warned that the sustainability agenda is not harmless by pointing out that “sustainability may be a source of inequality, so that only some people can afford to be sustainable and others cannot”(excerpt from a thematic summary). There were arguments that wealthy countries should not restrict less affluent countries' possibilities for economic development and social improvement, as reducing inequality and achieving an environmentally sustainable economy would benefit conservation efforts. Some participants insisted that the main costs of conservation efforts should be borne by developed nations, and that the implementation of conservation actions should not jeopardize improvements in well-being in developing countries. Amongst the discussions, the participants expressed ideas on how people and nature are connected, and how sustainability and conservation actions are tied together. 8of15 RAATIKAINEN ET AL. Watson, J. E. M., Dudley, N., Segan, D. B., & Hockings, M. 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Nature Communications,10, 2844. https://doi.org/10.1038/ s41467-019-10775-z SUPPORTING INFORMATION Additional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information section at the end of this article. How to cite this article: Raatikainen, K. J., Purhonen, J., Pohjanmies, T., Peura, M., Nieminen, E., Mustajärvi, L., Helle, I., ShennanFarp on, Y., Ahti, P. A., Basile, M., Bernardo, N., Bertram, M. G., Bouarakia, O., Brias-Guinart, A., Fijen, T., Froidevaux, J. S. P., Hemmingmoore, H., Hocevar, S., Kendall, L., …Ziemacki, J. (2021). Pathways towards a sustainable future envisioned by early-career conservation researchers. Conservation Science and Practice, e493. https:// doi.org/10.1111/csp2.493 RAATIKAINEN ET AL.15 of 15