The content of this Mansholt lecture came about through a wide science-policy consultation process. Existing ‘seeds of innovation’ in the biodiversity climate-food nexus were collected in a WUR-wide dialogue on 10th May 2022, which involved some 150 interdisciplinary experts. These seeds were collated into interventions for nature-positive futures, in an interdisciplinary workshop of WUR colleagues on 13th May 2022. They were further clustered into five entry points for nature-positive changes to the food system. The resulting entry points and interventions were discussed with several EU policy makers in another workshop in Brussels on 30th June 2022. We thank everyone involved in this process for their input

Voluntary contributions to public goods are vulnerable to free riding. A potential solution is the implementation of a costly institutional arrangement that deters free riding behavior. In this paper, we analyze to what extent resource users are willing to bear those costs and vote in favor of costly institutions. We carried out lab-in-the-field experiments with Cambodian farmers in the Kampong Chhnang province. In the first experiment, the subjects played public goods games, with an option to vote for a costly institution with a minimum contribution level. In the second experiment, subjects voted between a costless weak enforcement mechanism and a costly strict enforcement mechanism. We find broad support for both costly institutions, and even more so if players had been exposed to resource scarcity in the past. Also, we find that many users support the costly institutions even when the implementation costs outweigh the benefits and the institutions are not necessarily welfare enhancing. This highlights the importance of institutional settings that are fair, even if this comes at efficiency costs.

The tendency to cooperate in social dilemma situations strongly depends on how the decision is framed. In particular, cooperation levels are higher in decisions that involve doing something good to others, rather than avoid doing harm. However, this insight mostly comes from linear public goods games carried out as lab experiments. Here, we conduct a threshold public goods game -- framed as a public good or public bad -- that requires players to coordinate on a contribution threshold. The experiment is carried out as an artefactual field experiment in rural Cambodia with users who frequently cooperate and coordinate on water use, water infrastructure, and fishing, which are activities that link to the mechanisms of the game. We find that the level of cooperation and group success in reaching the threshold are higher in a positive than a negative frame. We find the role of beliefs to be salient, as players hold more optimistic beliefs about contributions of others in the negative frame. Generally, contributions exceed the best-response, but are not sufficient to close the gap between the too optimistic beliefs and actual contributions in the negative frame. Hence, contributions and group success are lower in the public bad game.