Transformative change and biodiversity

We explore how societies can change to effectively address major interconnected challenges such as climate change, poverty, and biodiversity loss. Our research looks at both incremental improvements and more fundamental, transformative shifts in social, economic, and ecological systems.

We study different perspectives on transformation - from local experiments and innovations to structural reforms in policy and economy. Through interviews, dialogues, and a PhD course, we connect these approaches to better understand how they can reinforce each other.

We aim to explore the role of research in transformative change to build new narratives, relationships and ways of learning and thinking to address interlinked global challenges. In a recent report called '71 visions on our role in social-environmental transformative change', we identified four ways of working to foster transformative change:

• Pluralising: how to open up and navigate diverse perspectives;
• Empowering:  how to mobilise people to act for collective good;
• Politicising: how to understand and address power relations; and
• Embedding: how to sustain iterative learning and action.

By using these approaches, we seek to bring together diverse people in research and society to extend the imagination about possibilities, reverse power relationships and lock-ins, and embed new ways of learning and decision-making in society.