Global sustainability initiatives are gaining momentum and impact, and place-based research can provide complementary insights to strengthen them. Here, we explore the current and potential role of place-based research into informing global sustainability initiatives by assessing the strengths, challenges, and opportunities. We show that place-based research allows for a better understanding of global social–ecological dynamics, and that transformations towards sustainability are often triggered at the local scale through the co-construction of local solutions. We discuss that the very nature of place-based research can hinder its transferability because its global integration faces temporal, spatial and governance scale mismatches, and we identify some of the key challenges of scaling-up its findings. We highlight new opportunities to mainstream place-based research that are emerging from first, long-term networks of place-based research, second, new institutional research settings that contribute with conceptual comprehensive frameworks and capacity building tools, third, a global community of practice, and fourth, the concept of region as a bridge between local and global sustainability initiatives. We believe that the time is ripe to promote the role of place-based social–ecological research as a key contributor to achieve global sustainability goals.

全球可持续发展举措正在获得动力和影响，基于地点的研究可以提供补充见解以加强这些举措。在这里，我们通过评估优势，挑战和机遇，探讨了基于地点的研究在告知全球可持续发展计划方面的当前和潜在作用。我们表明，基于场所的研究可以更好地理解全球社会生态动态，并且通过共同构建本地解决方案，通常会在本地范围内触发向可持续性的转变。我们讨论了基于场所的研究的本质可能会阻碍其可移植性，因为其全球整合面临着时间，空间和治理规模的不匹配，并且我们确定了扩大其研究结果的一些关键挑战。我们重点介绍了来自地方性研究的第一，长期网络，第二，新的机构研究环境（这些新的研究有助于概念性的综合框架和能力建设工具），第三，全球实践社区的发展为主流的地方性研究提供了新的机遇。第四，区域概念是本地和全球可持续发展计划之间的桥梁。我们认为，促进基于地点的社会生态研究作为实现全球可持续性目标的关键因素的作用的时机已经成熟。区域概念是地方和全球可持续发展倡议之间的桥梁。我们认为，促进基于地点的社会生态研究作为实现全球可持续性目标的关键因素的作用的时机已经成熟。区域概念是地方和全球可持续发展倡议之间的桥梁。我们认为，促进基于地点的社会生态研究作为实现全球可持续性目标的关键因素的作用的时机已经成熟。