review

After reviewing the social-ecological effects of 23 ecosystem restoration programs in Asia’s drylands, we find that these programs mainly contribute to SDGs synergistically, but the tradeoffs between social-ecological effects still exists.

In the context of global change, the community, as the basic unit of a social-ecological system, is facing both potential or existing shocks and trends in the structure and function of the system. Community-based adaptation (CBA) provides an effective way for communities to mitigate change and even seize the opportunity for transformation.

Based on a review of recent international frameworks for Water-Food-Energy-Ecosystem （WFEE） nexus construction，we found that there was a need to integrate the social governance processes of water，food and energy resource sectors from the perspective of ecosystem services.

By drawing on the cases of SES management in dryland areas, we propose three distinct but complementary approaches to promote SES fit based on comprehensive and systematic analyses, which can be summarized as structural, dynamic, and scale approaches.

Adaptive governance theory is influenced by “common pool resources management”, “resilience” and “governance”, and lays a foundation for the construction of transformative governance and collaborative governance.