Delivering the evidence base to confront land degradation through adaptive management

Implementing effective responses to curb habitat and biodiversity loss requires understanding which management interventions work, why they work, and under what conditions. Timely action to avoid, reduce, and reverse habitat loss and degradation can deliver substantial benefits, including biodiversity conservation, the maintenance of ecosystem services such as food and water security, and climate change mitigation. But achieving these outcomes depends on diagnosing the underlying drivers of loss, accounting for broader socio-economic contexts, and monitoring intervention performance. This perspective argues that adaptive management is the old trick needed to confront rapidly changing contexts for recovering ecosystems. However, rigorous studies that isolate causal drivers and evaluate policy and management effectiveness are therefore central for effective adaptive management. We synthesize the findings of 21 articles in the special issue ' Addressing complex drivers of land degradation via adaptive management ' to highlight current advances and remaining barriers for adaptive management in halting land-degradation and creating nature positive futures. The 21 papers bring together studies that span the full adaptive management cycle, including six papers that analyse the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss (Theme 1), eight papers that evaluate intervention impacts (Theme 2), and seven papers that design future solutions (Theme 3). Together the contributions yield an evidence base with real-world recommendations for tackling land-degradation through economic, political, and management instruments.