Common lands, shared futures: The importance of ecosystem services, justice, and sustainability through community land management

This editorial article introduces the special issue "The importance of common lands' management for sustaining ecosystem services". This special issue explores the dynamics of common lands and their role in providing ecosystem services, highlighting the interplay between local management and the environmental and social benefits they engender at both local and regional scales. It addresses an underexplored field through conceptual and empirical studies on provisioning and regulating ecosystem services of common lands. Effective management relies on the integration of local knowledge and participatory decision-making, yet faces challenges such as lack of recognition in policy, institutional silos, technical capacity and data gaps, cadastral uncertainty and conflict management.