Environment strategy: transformative changes for sustainability

Annex 1: Transformative Change in Various Global Assessments

UNEP State of the Environment Report (GEO-6, 2019): ‘The process whereby positive development results are achieved and sustained over time by institutionalizing policies, programmes and projects within national strategies. It should be noted that this embodies the concept of institutionally sustained results – consistency of achievement over time. This is in order to exclude short-term, transitory impact.’

IPBES Global Assessment (2019 and 2022): ‘Transformative change is a ‘fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values, needed for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, good quality of life and sustainable development’.

IPBES Values Assessment (2022) ‘Transformative change is a ‘fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values. We build on this definition through reference to the depth, breadth and dynamics of system reorganisation. Depth refers to change that goes beyond addressing the symptoms of environmental change or their proximate drivers, such as new technologies, incentive systems or protected areas, to include changes to underlying drivers, including consumption preferences, beliefs, ideologies and social inequalities (IPBES, 2019; Patterson et al., 2017; Scoones et al., 2015). Breadth refers to change across multiple spheres, with emerging consensus that transformation requires co-evolutionary change across different spheres of society, including personal, economic, political, institutional and technological ones (Harvey, 2010; O’Brien et al; Sygna, 2013; Pelling et al., 2015; Temper et al., 2018; Westley et al., 2011). Dynamics and processes refer to the emergent patterns of change across ‘depths’, ‘breadths’, and time that unfold as non-linear pathways. These may be characterised by ‘punctuated equilibrium’ in which more stable periods of incremental change are punctuated by bursts of change in which underlying structures are reorganised into new states (Patterson et al., 2017; Westley et al., 2011).

*IPBES Transformative Change (due end of 2024). A thematic assessment of the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, determinants of transformative change and options for achieving the 2050 vision for biodiversity (underway).

IPCC 2022a: ‘A system-wide change that requires more than technological change through consideration of social and economic factors that, with technology, can bring about rapid change at scale.’

IPCC, 2022b, Annex I: ‘Transformation pathways: ‘Trajectories describing consistent sets of possible futures of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, atmospheric concentrations, or global mean surface temperatures implied from mitigation and adaptation actions associated with a set of broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioural changes. This can encompass changes in the way energy and infrastructure are used and produced, natural resources are managed and institutions are set up, and in the pace and direction of technological change.’

GSDR (2019, p35): ‘Transformative change will mean harnessing bottom-up social, technological and institutional innovation, including indigenous knowledge and creativity at the grassroots level and in the informal sector, particularly – but not exclusively – in developing and emerging economies. … Transformative change also requires the reconfiguration of social practices, social norms, values and laws that promote unsustainable or discriminatory behaviour and choices ...’

GSDR (2023, p104) builds on the 2019 report, indicating that ‘Incremental and fragmented change is not sufficient and will not achieve the transformations that are required. The only way forward is to transform how we think, live, produce and consume in order to achieve a new equilibrium that balances resilience, security and well-being, and does so in harmony with nature. There are efforts to develop measurements of progress on sustainable development that complement GDP, but they should be further enhanced on the basis of socially robust science.’ GSDR 2023 takes a themed approach, including systems, suggesting that the SDGs can be achieved through transformation in six entry points: human well-being and capabilities; sustainable and just economies; sustainable food systems and healthy nutrition patterns; energy decarbonisation with universal access; urban and peri-urban development; the global environmental commons. Five levers are put forward as ‘entry points’ – governance, economy and finance, science and technology, individual and collective action, plus capacity building, with three transformation phases being envisioned (emergency, acceleration and stabilisation), to be underpinned by rigorous science. GSDR proposes that Member States should elaborate a shared SDG Transformation Framework including National plans of action, local and industry-specific planning, initiatives to increase fiscal space (e.g. tax reforms, debt restructuring and relief etc), amongst other things.

Climate Investment Fund (2021) ‘Broadly defined, transformational change is a deep and fundamental change in a system’s form, function, or processes. The concept of transformational change is agnostic to normative goals or values and transformational changes can have both positive and negative impacts.” Where intentional actions are undertaken to tackle climate change, this can mean deep changes in systems that then generate what may be judged positive impacts.

Food and Agriculture Organization (2021, p8): ‘Transformational change in land use and climate change is characterised by: (i) processes that moves away from the current regime of unsustainable land use, maladaptation and unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions, opening pathways to reverse these outcomes and work towards a sustainable planet (ii) being achieved through sustained changes that accept complexity and uncertainty (iii) a focus on root causes and nurturing relationships between scales and dimensions of change (e.g. organizations, markets, technologies, power and social relations, and ideas) (iv) being based on participation, equity and transparency (v) being supported by knowledge and data used for understanding, evaluation and course corrections.’

UNDP, 2011, p9. Focusing on development cooperation, ‘Transformational change is the process whereby positive development results are achieved and sustained over time by institutionalizing policies, programmes and projects within national strategies. It should be noted that this embodies the concept of institutionally sustained results – consistency of achievement over time. This is in order to exclude short-term, transitory impact.’