Hope—grounded in evidence of meaningful action—can inspire change agents to persist through setbacks, innovate in the face of complexity, and amplify existing initiatives. Documenting ongoing collective actions for transformative change are thus not only descriptive but catalytic.
In this session, we explore new approaches for documenting the global spread of diverse collective actions for transformative change. We call for contributions which document the scale and diversity of action striving towards transformation of human-nature relationships. We especially welcome empirical evidence of actions that are observed globally and involve plural sets of actors and values, in particular local and indigenous communities.
This session will feature reflections from the recent IPBES Transformative Change assessment as well as preliminary results from the ongoing ‘Hope assessment’ which tracks the attempts at transformation in 9 cross-cutting systems of society, including the economy, law, spatial planning, education, arts and culture. The assessment documents an acceleration in the global diffusion of diverse initiatives in these systems, which suggests that there is a substantial, hopeful global spreading of collective actions with capacity to advance transformative change.
In response to the interconnected crises related to nature’s decline, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework calls for large-scale actions to ‘live in harmony with nature’ by 2050. Achieving this vision requires shifts in practices, social structures, and values across society, which demands collective actions across all major societal systems on local, regional and global scales, and engaging governments, civil society, Indigenous peoples, and the private sector. Here, we bring together data on a diverse set of initiatives towards living in harmony with nature across eight major societal systems: ‘spatial planning’, ‘health and wellbeing’, 'production and consumption’, 'economy and finance’, ‘law’, ‘governance’, 'knowledge and education’, and ‘arts and culture’. Each initiative consists of multiple traceable actions, ranging from local innovations to large-scale system-level interventions that reshape institutions, practices, or infrastructure. We quantify how widespread these initiatives are today, where they have potential for impact, and when and by whom they have been spread. Using existing databases and new data, we assess where the initiatives are today and where they see high levels of action and good quality of implementation. We also investigate the temporal dynamics of spread to identify regions of origins, the economic development contexts of major adoption and periods of rapid international spread. Finally, we identify what types of actors drive implementation of the ten initiatives, whether initiatives have diversified in types of actors over time, and the most prevalent coalitions. Our analysis builds the empirical case to retain hope for a future where biodiversity is conserved and restored, the needs of all people are met while the stability of Earth’s systems are maintained, when initiatives included here and beyond are continue to be amplified, whether to be replicated in other geographical contexts, to be institutionalised for stronger impacts, and to be culturally strengthened for paradigm shifts. This analysis serves as both a repository and collective memory of human capacities to inspire further actions, and as evidence of pluralistic, collective human effort across the world to live in harmony with nature.
How to cite: Ningrum, D., Schill, C., and Søgaard Jørgensen, P. and the Empirics of Hope team: Global evidence of collective human efforts to live in harmony with nature, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-610, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-610, 2026.
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.
How to cite: Schill, C., Ningrum, D., Søgaard Jørgensen, P., Flores, C., and Österblom, H.: Amplifying initiatives with transformative potentials through a ‘living repository of hope.’, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-619, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-619, 2026.
This presentation introduces the Eco Jurisprudence Monitor (EJM), a pioneering open-access platform that tracks the global rise of ecological jurisprudence initiatives and provides a searchable archive of related legal documents. Ecological jurisprudence refers to legal frameworks that challenge anthropocentric assumptions and seek to embed ecological principles into law and governance systems. Since the early 2000s, there has been exponential growth in legal initiatives rooted in ecological jurisprudence, including rights of nature, ecocide laws, ecological constitutionalism, Earth trusteeship, and Indigenous-led legal approaches. These movements—numbering over 550 initiatives across 44 countries—represent an emerging paradigm shift in legal norms and values, aiming to address planetary crises like climate change and biodiversity loss through systemic transformation.
The EJM enables systematic, comparative analysis by providing a relational database and searchable legal archive of ecological law initiatives. It categorizes legal developments across six broad approaches, including rights-based, responsibilities-based, Indigenous, and science-based eco-governance frameworks. It also disaggregates initiatives by legal instrument (e.g., constitutions, court rulings, statutes, policies, declarations) and tracks the conceptual framing, legal actors involved, governance arrangements, and ecological entities addressed. The presentation details the EJM’s conceptual framework and data methodology, including its effort to balance inclusivity with analytic clarity while integrating Indigenous knowledge systems, as well as patterns related to the rise of ecological law globally.
Findings based on EJM data reveal that ecological jurisprudence is increasingly institutionalized in domestic and international law through diverse pathways—including judicial rulings, local ordinances, tribal law, and international soft law. The presentation argues that understanding this legal evolution is essential to studying global norm change and environmental governance innovation to meet existing environmental crises related to climate change and biodiversity loss. By facilitating comparative, interdisciplinary research, the EJM offers a critical tool for scholars, policymakers, and activists seeking to understand and support the legal transformations needed to navigate ecological collapse and advance planetary justice.
How to cite: Kauffman, C.: The Eco Jurisprudence Monitor: Tracking Global Developments in Ecological Law, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-26, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-26, 2026.
Transformative change is vital to ensure sustainable and just futures for people and nature, including the nexus of biodiversity, climate, food and energy provision, and good quality of life. To better understand how transformative change can unfold, and to contribute to its deliberation and nurturing, we urgently need to build on frontier transformation theory in combination with empirical evidence.
This Horizon Europe Transpath study addresses this gap by applying a novel methodological approach merging robust systems‑thinking tools with social‑science and humanities (SSH) participatory methods. Specifically, we engage an array of change‑making actors drawn from food and energy systems to analyze their perceived enablers and disablers of transformative change, and employ a Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) approach to convert the identified factors into mapped mechanisms of transformation within these sectors.
Our findings reveal the patterns of interaction between transformation enablers and disablers, including the influence of commonly overlooked factors such as the reputation assigned to active citizenship, alongside public conformity to dominant norms, anti‑transformative lobbying and non‑market provisioning capacity. We highlight complex dynamics between different levels of leverage, including individual motivation and community capitals, institutional incentives and regulatory frameworks, cultural narratives and infrastructure systems. We further situate these empirical findings within the conceptual framing recently advanced by the Intergovernmental Science‑Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Transformative Change Assessment’s triad of views, structures and practices.
Importantly, our approach allows for reflexive knowledge co-creation, yet ensures yielding tangible insights into the mechanisms of change. It thus provides a valuable tool for practitioners and researchers seeking to design interventions for transformative change.
Furthermore, the study identifies similarities and key differences between the transformation enablers and disablers identified on the gradient between Western and Eastern Europe. It highlights the need to understand the deeply contextual interplays between the dominant societal discourses (views), governance and economic arrangements (structures), and everyday routines (practices), and how their vast differences across seemingly similar contexts may impact pro-transformative policy making, acceptance and implementation. Thus, this work contributes actionable knowledge to support just pathways towards current biodiversity, climate and sustainability goals.
How to cite: Harmáčková, Z., Suchá, L., Schultzová, P., Kok, K., Kovacs, E., Fisher, L., and Nel, J.: Co-creating transformative pathways in food and energy systems: integrating systems thinking and social science approaches to identify mechanisms of change, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-264, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-264, 2026.
Hope is increasingly recognized as a critical but underexplored dimension of sustainability transformations. While the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment (TCA) does not explicitly theorize hope, instead it identified six broad approaches to transformative change that (all) implicitly refer to hope as an enabling mechanism for triggering interactions between them. The six approaches around systems, structural, inner transformation, empowerment, knowledge co-creation, and science & technology approaches highlight different entry points, actors and actions to promote, accelerate and scale transformative change. Amidst these social dynamics, hope becomes an important force for weaving these transformative change approaches into possible context specific social dynamics. This paper synthesizes how hope operates across these six approaches, drawing on empirical insights from the IPBES TCA case study database and uses examples from specific place-based social-ecological research to illustrate its mechanisms.
The insights emphasise the need to combine the approaches as they provide complementary mechanisms, entry points, and actor dynamics and hence practical means for navigating complexity and uncertainty. Consequently, systems approaches generate hope by revealing leverage points and demonstrating that entrenched dynamics are malleable. Structural approaches cultivate hope through the possibility of redesigning institutions, governance arrangements, and societal rules toward justice. Inner transformation approaches position hope as an inner capacity rooted in mindsets, values, and worldviews that nurture care, reconnection, and transformative imagination. Empowerment approaches anchor hope in collective agency, particularly for marginalized groups striving to reshape power relations and assert rights. Knowledge co-creation approaches foster hope in the generative potential of collaboration across knowledge systems, creating shared visions and new solution pathways. Finally, science and technology approaches provide instrumental hope in innovation, discovery, and the problem-solving capabilities of science.
Together, these approaches show that hope is not merely an emotion but a distributed enabling condition woven throughout processes of transformative change. Understanding hope as a multi-dimensional driver expands the conceptual and practical repertoire for designing transformations that are grounded, inclusive, and capable of sustaining long-term engagement toward just and sustainable futures.
How to cite: Calderón-Contreras, R. and Zinngrebe, Y.: Hope as an Enabling Force of Transformative Change, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-749, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-749, 2026.
