A.G. and M.S. are supported by the Israel Science Foundation through grant no. 2751/16. J.L. is supported by the EU-H2020 through grants #818002, #869324, and the BiodivRestore ERA-Net COFUND (2020–2021) through NICHES. D.V.B. is supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) through grant #73133571. A.G., F.C., and J.L. are supported by the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development #I-1533-500.15/2021. S.P. and M.V. are supported by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) through grant no. 033W046A. T.M. is supported by the NSF through grants #1444755, #1927167, and #193493. S.A.W. was supported by a Data Science Environments project award from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Award 2013-10-29) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Award 3835) to the University of Washington eScience Institute. A.R.-F. was supported by H2020 Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (#655475) and Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación Postdoctoral Fellowship (IJC2019-040836-I/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) from the Spanish Government. O.K. was supported by the Academy of Finland and Kone Foundation. The authors thank the Department of Innovation, Research, University and Museums of the Autonomous Province of Bozen/Bolzano (Italy) for covering the open access publication costs.

Social media data are transforming sustainability science. However, challenges from restrictions in data accessibility and ethical concerns regarding potential data misuse have threatened this nascent field. Here, we review the literature on the use of social media data in environmental and sustainability research. We find that they can play a novel and irreplaceable role in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals by allowing a nuanced understanding of human-nature interactions at scale, observing the dynamics of social-ecological change, and investigating the co-construction of nature values. We reveal threats to data access and highlight scientific responsibility to address trade-offs between research transparency and privacy protection, while promoting inclusivity. This contributes to a wider societal debate of social media data for sustainability science and for the common good.

Peer reviewed