Amplifying initiatives with transformative potentials through a ‘living repository of hope.’

Hope is a powerful concept associated with human motivation to act, but its conceptual and practical use in relation to enacting society-wide transformative changes has been limited. Building on theoretical works on active hope across the disciplines of psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and behavioral science, we argue for a scientific mobilisation to amplify initiatives with transformative potentials through a ‘living repository of hope’, where empirical evidence on hope are documented, analysed and utilised as a source of inspirations, which can provide lessons and strategies for future work. The ‘living repository of hope’ collects and analyses a range of collective efforts for biodiversity and nature which have emerged during the past century, whether they have globally spread or in the middle of gaining momentum for mainstreaming. In this session, we present a framework to leverage on initiatives that have scaled out to other geographical contexts, in addition to be institutionalised in policy and rules and to be supported by shifts in paradigms and values. This framework contributes to the knowledge building process of how across continents, societal domains and scales, a multitude of actors are actively experimenting with pathways towards systems change, reflecting calls for transformative change that is innovative, adaptive, inclusive, and integrative across systems and jurisdictions. This framework also helps build the knowledge of how diverse values of nature are increasingly being translated to practice across various societal systems. The foundational work to apply the framework, exemplified in an ongoing research project ‘Hope Assessment’, is also presented in this session. We argue that this ‘living repository of hope’ is vital to recall the extent and the specifics of human collective efforts for a biodiversity positive future. We invite scientists from multiple disciplines to join the process of building the ‘living repository of hope’ and expand on the iteration to draw lessons and insights from it.