Landscapes—a lens for assessing sustainability

Context: There are urgent calls to transition society to more sustainable trajectories, at scales ranging from local to global. Landscape sustainability (LS), or the capacity for landscapes to provide equitable access to ecosystem services essential for human wellbeing for both current and future generations, provides an operational approach to monitor these transitions. However, the complexity of landscapes complicates how and what to consider when assessing LS. Objectives: To identify important features of landscapes that remain challenging to consider in LS assessments and provide guidance to strengthen future assessments. Methods: We conducted two workshops to identify the complex features of landscapes that remain under-considered in LS assessments, and developed guidelines on how to better incorporate these features. Results: We identify open and connected boundaries and diversity of values as landscape features that must be better considered in LS assessments or risk exacerbating offstage sustainability burdens and power inequalities. We provide guidelines to avoid these pitfalls which emphasize assessing ecosystem service interactions across interconnected landscapes and incorporating local actors’ diverse values. Conclusions: Our guidelines provide a stepping stone for researchers and practitioners to better incorporate landscape complexities into LS assessments to inform landscape-level decisions and actions.