As is becoming abundantly clear, early climate-change warnings have not been effective, as the planet continues on its unsustainable pathway, crossing planetary boundaries and racing towards a sixth mass extinction. Despite the existence of many international agreements and goals being made, more diverse interventions are needed. Therefore, by approaching this sustainability problem through a systems perspective, more effective solutions might be found to adapt and transform whole systems. The current Special Issue: Human-Nature Connectedness as Leverage Points for Sustainability Transformation is now out in the Journal Ecosystem & People. The Editorial of this special issue (Riechers et al. 2021) aims to present an overview of the inspiring articles published to show new ways of re-connecting humans to nature (see Fig. 1).

For example, Raatikainen et al. (2020) maintain that reconnecting to nature has the potential to reveal deep leverage points that could transform our current, unsustainable system. Bieling et…