Grasslands are among the largest terrestrial ecosystems, yet are highly threatened due to long-term transformations such as fragmentation, degradation, and land-use change across Eurasia. Addressing biodiversity loss in these systems requires understanding and leveraging the roles of institutions, social norms, and plural biodiversity values that underpin human-nature relationships and shape governance outcomes. ActSustainably investigates how these deep leverage points can impact societal sustainability transformations by aligning formal and informal rules with collective actions for sustainable grassland use across Austria, South Tyrol, Denmark, Hungary, and Kazakhstan. The project’s relevance lies in providing actionable knowledge for policy and practice to prevent biodiversity loss and improve governance effectiveness across diverse socio-economic and geopolitical contexts. It advances an integrative approach to identify values, institutions and technologies that enable biodiversity-positive transformations, linking institutional regimes, social norms, and plural values to the sustainability of grassland socio-ecological systems.
