What role for global change research networks in enabling transformative science for global sustainability? A Global Land Programme perspective

Global environmental change (GEC) and sustainability science (SS) communities’ science is increasingly challenged to inform transformations to sustainability.Recognizing this, theGlobal Land Programme (GLP), a network of the international land system science community, is developing, testing, and launching new network infrastructures, science–policy interfaces, and coproduction approaches. This paper charts the efforts of the GLP – since its2015joiningofFutureEarth,a10-yearinitiativeto advance global sustainability science – to support the land system science community as it endeavors to produce transformative research oriented toward sustainable development. Moving from incremental to transformational modes of knowledge coproduction across scientific research networks – such as those representedunderthe umbrella ofthe FutureEarth—requires that these work across multiple knowledge domains, scales, contexts, and regions, and in collaboration with a diversity of actors from global-level decisionmakers to national, regional, and local level civil society organizations aswell as the private sector.Beyond the generation of fundamental science, GLP’s rich co-design tradition of working with land managers and linking case-study and fieldbasedresearch toglobal synthesis situateitas akey institutionand platform accelerating transformative research oriented toward sustainable development.