1.  Current sustainability challenges demand approaches that acknowledge a plurality of human–nature interactions and worldviews, for which biocultural approaches are considered appropriate and timely.

2.  This systematic review analyses the application of biocultural approaches to sus-tainability in scientific journal articles published between 1990 and 2018 through a mixed methods approach combining qualitative content analysis and quantita-tive multivariate methods.

3.  The study identifies seven  distinct  biocultural lenses,  that is,  different ways  of understanding  and applying biocultural  approaches,  which to different degrees consider the key aspects  of sustainability science—inter- and transdisciplinarity, social justice and normativity.

4.  The review suggests that biocultural approaches in sustainability science need to move from describing  how nature  and culture are co-produced  to co-producing knowledge for sustainability solutions, and in so doing, better account for questions of power, gender and transformations, which has been largely neglected thus far