Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TRANSPATH (Transformative pathways for synergising just biodiversity and climate actions)
Période du rapport: 2022-11-01 au 2024-04-30
Our planet is under mounting pressure. Under our current lifestyle, three planets would be needed to sustain present consumption. Unsustainable consumption and production are drivers of three planetary crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. While measures have been considered to address climate crises, global biodiversity and climate crises cannot be solved in isolation or by merely ramping up what is already being done. The global biodiversity and climate crises cannot be solved in isolation or by merely ramping up what is already being done. Urgent and ambitious transformative changes are needed in our economies and societies.
TRANSPATH’s main objective is to identify leverage points and interventions for triggering societal transformative changes - at the consumer, producer, and organizational levels. By doing so, our project seeks whole-of-society opportunities for achieving climate neutrality while allowing local communities and nature to flourish. To understand transformative change, TRANSPATH draws on diverse contexts in Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, and Latin America.
Through careful consideration of alternative visions, values, actions, and their systemic interplay across various scales and over time, TRANSPATH identifies strategic intervention points capable of triggering a chain reaction of positive changes in nature’s variety and abundance. These policies and actions are intended to make it easier for people to adopt eco-friendly choices at various levels of action in their daily lives. These interventions systematically assess the synergies and trade-offs between actions across multiple stakeholders and locations while addressing the significance of incentives and political impediments to implementation.
Thus, TRANSPATH intends to provide different channels to make significant changes and tools to help make those transformative changes happen. It also offers guidance on using these tools effectively, recognizing that finding the best way to create meaningful change is an evolving, flexible process. To implement these changes, TRANSPATH builds a network of people who can lead and support these transformations, ensuring the decisions are inclusive and widely accepted.
TRANSPATH’s main objective is to identify leverage points and interventions for triggering societal transformative changes - at the consumer, producer, and organizational levels. By doing so, our project seeks whole-of-society opportunities for achieving climate neutrality while allowing local communities and nature to flourish. To understand transformative change, TRANSPATH draws on diverse contexts in Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, and Latin America.
Through careful consideration of alternative visions, values, actions, and their systemic interplay across various scales and over time, TRANSPATH identifies strategic intervention points capable of triggering a chain reaction of positive changes in nature’s variety and abundance. These policies and actions are intended to make it easier for people to adopt eco-friendly choices at various levels of action in their daily lives. These interventions systematically assess the synergies and trade-offs between actions across multiple stakeholders and locations while addressing the significance of incentives and political impediments to implementation.
Thus, TRANSPATH intends to provide different channels to make significant changes and tools to help make those transformative changes happen. It also offers guidance on using these tools effectively, recognizing that finding the best way to create meaningful change is an evolving, flexible process. To implement these changes, TRANSPATH builds a network of people who can lead and support these transformations, ensuring the decisions are inclusive and widely accepted.
During the first reporting period, significant progress was made in conceptualizing transformative pathways for integrating climate and biodiversity actions. A key achievement was the development of a comprehensive framework that synthesizes current knowledge on triggering and navigating these pathways. This framework incorporates insights from leverage points, positive tipping points, the pursuit of a safe and just operating space for humanity, and regenerative sustainability. Central to this approach is the concept of "net-positive biodiversity-climate tipping points," illustrating how small changes can lead to substantial improvements in both social and ecological systems.
The framework underscores the complexity of achieving transformative pathways, emphasizing the need to address multiple leverage points, levels of social action, spatial scales, time periods, and notions of justice. It advocates for actions that mitigate harm and generate positive societal and environmental outcomes. A Transformative Navigation Toolkit was introduced to support the development of "safe and just operating spaces" (SJOS) for biodiversity, climate change, and human rights, tailored to specific decision-making contexts. This toolkit aims to guide stakeholders in reflexively defining SJOS and designing pathways, providing essential methods, concepts, and principles for inclusive deliberations.
Furthermore, in setting up Science-policy-practitioner labs, progress was made in conducting context analyses and designing tools for transformative change. These labs are pivotal in engaging diverse stakeholders across Eastern and Western Europe to co-design pathways for achieving significant biodiversity gains and carbon neutrality. The next steps involve refining these transformative pathways and leveraging the results from these labs to identify key intervention points and scale up sustainable actions.
In parallel, efforts focused on understanding international trade and financial policies' impacts on environmental sustainability. The analysis revealed that trade influences climate change and biodiversity through mechanisms such as pollution, invasive species, and resource depletion. Moreover, the financial sector was identified as pivotal in allocating capital and fostering economic value. Despite the deep conceptual and practical challenges involved in understanding the dual materiality of the financial sector's interaction with nature (understood as affecting and being affected by nature degradation), there is a rising trend towards embracing sustainable finance and mitigating nature related risks.
The framework underscores the complexity of achieving transformative pathways, emphasizing the need to address multiple leverage points, levels of social action, spatial scales, time periods, and notions of justice. It advocates for actions that mitigate harm and generate positive societal and environmental outcomes. A Transformative Navigation Toolkit was introduced to support the development of "safe and just operating spaces" (SJOS) for biodiversity, climate change, and human rights, tailored to specific decision-making contexts. This toolkit aims to guide stakeholders in reflexively defining SJOS and designing pathways, providing essential methods, concepts, and principles for inclusive deliberations.
Furthermore, in setting up Science-policy-practitioner labs, progress was made in conducting context analyses and designing tools for transformative change. These labs are pivotal in engaging diverse stakeholders across Eastern and Western Europe to co-design pathways for achieving significant biodiversity gains and carbon neutrality. The next steps involve refining these transformative pathways and leveraging the results from these labs to identify key intervention points and scale up sustainable actions.
In parallel, efforts focused on understanding international trade and financial policies' impacts on environmental sustainability. The analysis revealed that trade influences climate change and biodiversity through mechanisms such as pollution, invasive species, and resource depletion. Moreover, the financial sector was identified as pivotal in allocating capital and fostering economic value. Despite the deep conceptual and practical challenges involved in understanding the dual materiality of the financial sector's interaction with nature (understood as affecting and being affected by nature degradation), there is a rising trend towards embracing sustainable finance and mitigating nature related risks.
TRANSPATH aims to harness natural resources sustainably and drive social innovations that synergize biodiversity, climate adaptation, and mitigation. The goal is widespread adoption of these practices across society, transforming extraction, production, consumption, and trade to align with planetary limits. Actions should be regularly reviewed to maintain 'safe and just operating spaces.' This approach fosters diverse values, legitimacy, and integrated, long-term governance.
Specific outcomes of the intervention are:
i) The ability to navigate transformative paths is made possible and connected across the European Union, Member States, and local levels through policies and decision-making that are integrated, inclusive, adaptive, and diverse.
ii) Individuals, communities, businesses, and authorities are actively engaged and inspired to change their daily life decisions affecting global sustainability challenges through locally tailored leverage points that accelerate shifts to sustainable and just extraction, production, consumption, and trade.
iii) Integrated assessment across biodiversity, climate, and other sustainability goals becomes a significant practice that leverages synergies between biodiversity-climate actions. This, in turn, helps environmental policies become a source of economic innovation rather than a financial burden.
iv) Interventions robustly support shifts toward sustainable extraction, production, consumption, and trade. These interventions back transformative niche innovations and exert pressure on existing socio-economic systems and practices through economic instruments, enhanced governance, and a pro-environmental choice architecture.
Specific outcomes of the intervention are:
i) The ability to navigate transformative paths is made possible and connected across the European Union, Member States, and local levels through policies and decision-making that are integrated, inclusive, adaptive, and diverse.
ii) Individuals, communities, businesses, and authorities are actively engaged and inspired to change their daily life decisions affecting global sustainability challenges through locally tailored leverage points that accelerate shifts to sustainable and just extraction, production, consumption, and trade.
iii) Integrated assessment across biodiversity, climate, and other sustainability goals becomes a significant practice that leverages synergies between biodiversity-climate actions. This, in turn, helps environmental policies become a source of economic innovation rather than a financial burden.
iv) Interventions robustly support shifts toward sustainable extraction, production, consumption, and trade. These interventions back transformative niche innovations and exert pressure on existing socio-economic systems and practices through economic instruments, enhanced governance, and a pro-environmental choice architecture.