In 2024, the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment (TCA) Summary for Policy Makers set out a powerful call: to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss through fundamental, system-wide reconfigurations of human-nature interactions. It outlined visions and theories of transformative change; barriers and challenges for taking action; and strategies and actions for delivering transformative change. While noting that practical pathways and grounded strategies for enacting transformative change remain elusive, contested, and politically fraught, the IPBES TCA provides a framework for action.
This session explores how the overarching objectives, principles, and strategies of the IPBES TCA can be put into action—examining emerging practices, partnerships, governance innovations, and knowledge systems that support systemic shifts toward just and sustainable futures for nature and people. Contributors should include specific reference to the IPBES TCA. We welcome practice and research examples, covering topics including, but not limited to:
● The underlying causes of biodiversity loss and nature’s decline, including disconnection from nature
● What transformative change looks like in practice.
● How different approaches to transformative change seek to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss.
● How entrenched power structures and institutions can be navigated or reshaped.
● The role of co-production, participation, and diverse knowledge systems (including Indigenous and local knowledge).
● The role of Indigenous peoples in transformative change
● The role of creativity and imagination for transformative change
● Experiences in enacting pathways, strategies and actions for transformative change, including reconnection with nature

A substantial amount of ongoing studies are dedicated to investigate what can bring about transformative change. Yet, are scientists doing a good enough job at documenting the spread and diversity of collective actions for transformative change? Can we build a joint and coordinated approach for documenting the diffusion of transformative ideas and action across scales? What can we learn from such diverse actions and ideas for biodiversity-positive, just, and equitable local and global futures?

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.

We welcome contributions that discuss biodiversity conservation from the perspective of philosophy: ethics, aesthetics, the philosophy of science, and political theory. Particularly welcome are papers on WBF general theme “leading transformation together”. Other topics include but are not limited to:
• The philosophy of valuing and protecting biodiversity;
• Justice in and politics of biodiversity conservation, e.g. ownership of genetic resources, democracy and biodiversity, data issues, bio/ecosecurity;
• Ethical analysis of different conservation techniques and strategies (e.g. de-extinction, natural vs. artificial biodiversity conservation, assisted migration, restoration);
• Analysis (and critique) of the ‘biodiversity’ and/or related conservation concepts;
We are open to presentations from all philosophical positions and traditions. The WBF conference attracts audience interested in different aspects of biodiversity conservation. Therefore, we emphasise that presentations should address an interdisciplinary audience. Interested presenters will also have the opportunity to share their draft papers with other session participants before the conference to in-depth exchange.
We suggest that the session will span over 3 slots. Presentations will be grouped by their content (1-2 sessions on more theoretical and conceptual works and 1-2 sessions dedicated to more practice-oriented questions). At the 2024 WBF, philosophy sessions attracted full rooms.
We propose that each presentation is allocated 30 min[1] including Q&A. This request is based on our experiences with organising these sessions at the WBF in 2020, 2022 and 2024.
[1] 30 minutes slots enable attendants to still easily switch between sessions as there is perfect match in the presentation starting times.

Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) have long played vital roles in forest stewardship, shaping biodiversity conservation, cultural identity, and ecosystem resilience. Yet globally, shifting socio-political, economic, demographic, and ecological contexts are weakening these ties. This session explores how to meaningfully reconnect communities with forests through inclusive, adaptive, and forward-looking governance.
Drawing on diverse experiences in participatory forestry and landscape management, the session examines how governance transitions, rural outmigration, reduced forest dependency, and shifting markets are reshaping community-forest relations. We will discuss legal innovations, digital tools, recognition mechanisms, and territorial approaches that offer new pathways forward.
We invite papers that analyze:
Governance transitions and representation of IPLCs in forest and biodiversity governance.
Social and demographic change and its effects on collective forest action.
Recognizing and scaling IPLC stewardship through OECMs and other legal-policy tools.
Reconnecting fragmented forests and communities via adaptive governance and co-management.
Rethinking community forestry models for long-term sustainability.

Achieving transformative change in biodiversity governance requires more than new tools—it demands a fundamental rethinking of how we value and relate to nature. This session examines how relational and constitutive values can inform more inclusive, pluralistic, and just governance. Building on the IPBES Values Assessment, which positioned relational values alongside intrinsic and instrumental values, we extend the conversation by introducing constitutive values—focusing on how valuations emerge over time through cultural practices, social interactions, and institutions. This shifts attention from the content of values to the processes that generate, sustain, and transform them, including how certain values come to dominate or decline.
Recognising these social and historical dynamics helps identify leverage points for change and engage with Indigenous and local knowledge systems—not only as sources of alternative values, but as reflections of distinct ontologies and governance logics. By foregrounding culturally embedded and historically situated modes of valuation, constitutive values illuminate context-sensitive, power-aware pathways for reconnecting people and nature.
The session invites presentations that explore: (1) how relational and constitutive values are produced, reproduced, or contested; (2) how tensions among values are negotiated in governance; (3) how socio-ecological change affects their durability or transformation; and (4) conceptual and methodological innovations for making these values actionable. Together, we aim to advance understanding of how culturally embedded values shape governance and to explore transformative pathways for navigating value pluralism.

The IPBES Transformative Change Assessment (2024) advances an actionable framework for assessing strategies and interventions to achieve the sustainable development goals. Its emphasis on transformative change as integral changes in views, structures, and practices can be applied to interventions for advancing the SDGs and the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity. Thus the TCA proposes a novel reconceptualization of the means to achieve and advance targets associated with the 17 SDGs and with the 2050 Vision of the Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention of Biological Diversity.
A systematic understanding of TC is critical to achieve the SDGs and the 2050 Vision because the SDGs and the 2050 Vision envisages a complete transformation of global economies and natural systems. To achieve the SDGs and the Global Vision, we must reconceptualize strategies and mechanisms that build on the insights of the TCA to advance these global goals. The TCA’s framework for transformative change pinpoints the key elements missing from current efforts by governments, non-profits, and business organizations to advance the SDGs. It highlights how attention to integral shifts in views, structures and practices can be incorporated into SDG and biodiversity focused efforts for more systematic advance for a better world for biodiversity and people. The proposed panel session will focus on the sustainable development goals closely related to biodiversity and nature: Life below water, Life on land, Climate action, and Responsible consumption and production. The papers will analyze opportunities for common interventions related to these goals to assess how they can lead to transformative change for sustainable development through integral shifts in views, structures and practices.

Biodiversity loss is a great danger for humanity and planetary wellbeing on Earth. The root causes of biodiversity loss are connected to human production and consumption practices which create pressure to increasing the exploitation of natural resources. According to Richardson et al. (2023) six of nine planetary boundaries have been crossed due to the impacts of human activity and extensive resource use. These overshoots are driven by unsustainable consumption of energy, water and materials.
This session explores the complex interdependencies between economic systems and ecological integrity, addressing how choices in agriculture, manufacturing, and consumer behaviour directly affect biodiversity outcomes. In line with the conference theme ‘Leading Transformation Together’, we highlight the urgency of confronting the systemic drivers of biodiversity loss by rethinking production and consumption within planetary boundaries, and by co-developing biodiversity-positive futures grounded in justice and equity. We invite papers that foster discussion and share insights on how biodiversity is interconnected with consumption, production, markets and marketing systems. We bring together researchers to explore how consumption and production patterns—across sectors and scales—can either undermine or support biodiversity.
Through interdisciplinary perspectives, we examine both drivers of biodiversity loss and opportunities for transformative practices that align production and consumption with planetary boundaries. We welcome presenters from a variety of backgrounds, for example ecologist or biodiversity researchers, environmental economists, researchers of sustainable business, consumer researchers, policy experts on biodiversity and trade, or indigenous community researchers.

Strengthening the quality of human–nature relationships is increasingly recognized as a
leverage point for addressing biodiversity loss and fostering transformational change
(Riechers et al., 2021). Nature-based recreation (NBR) activities such as hiking, skiing,
birdwatching and many more not only contribute to individual well-being but may also
help cultivate more sustainable human–nature relationships. Beyond their instrumental
benefits for mental and physical health, these activities are thought to foster
environmental care and encourage conservation-oriented behaviour (Soga & Gaston,
2016). They can also be associated with intrinsic and relational values, thus including
the three common value typologies (intrinsic, instrumental and relational values).

In this workshop, we aim to collaboratively explore the values ascribed to nature
through the practice of different NBR activities and connect these to practical
implications. Following introductions to value concepts, methods for studying them,
and the role of NBR through the lens of birdwatching, we will discuss different NBR
activities and examine the values attributed to nature in each. In a second step, we will
foster a dialogue between theory and practice to explore how these insights can inform
the design and management of places where NBR activities take place

SIGN-UP LINK: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf0tww299IeaY4iCB_sL-9K9DHRmyI5YOmTkZ_LShJgBRflLw/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=109323683529261027539

Living in harmony with nature is the shared vision of the KM Global Biodiversity Framework for 2050 and is recognised as a central principle in sustainability decisions. Transformative change at all levels, integrating plural values and understanding human-nature interactions, is key to achieving this vision.
We invite the biodiversity community to exchange thoughts and knowledge on a just transformative change that explicitly considers the quality of life of the non-human world. We will reflect on what paradigm shift is needed for individuals and society to truly co-exist with non-humans, with special attention to a group often overlooked in these debates: domesticated non-human animals, whose lives are closely tied to the provision of certain ecosystem and cultural services.
The workshop will open with a lecture on a quality-of-life approach, followed by its operationalisation and a discussion of potential transformative change actions derived from it. This approach assesses the influence of socio-economic indicators and nature’s contributions to people within the land system on both people’s and nature’s quality of life. Participants will be invited to take the perspective of non-humans, addressing their individual and collective needs across material and non-material quality-of-life dimensions and value frames (people and nature living from, in, with, and as each other).
We propose a minimum of 90 min., extendable to 180 min. if the perspectives of other non-human groups are considered. Goals include fostering dialogue on non-human quality of life and improving its integration into assessments and transformative change frameworks. Expected outcomes include exchange, mutual learning, feedback on the approach, and networking for collaboration in this field.

A common approach to transformative change centers on rethinking human-nature relations. While some Transdisciplinary Transformative Change Initiatives (TTCIs) succeed with this, they often stress ‘reconnection’ as a starting point (Abson et al. 2017), assuming that human-human relations are inconsequential and nature is something we can ‘disconnect’ from – contrasting with holistic worldviews. Other TTCIs have engaged Indigenous Peoples’ perspectives but often without addressing how power prioritizes certain forms of knowledge. As a result, these efforts can lead to problematic knowledge extraction or subordination of such perspectives (Latulippe & Klenk 2020).
We aimed to address these issues by interweaving experiences and knowledges of Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics and practitioners; inviting Indigenous Peoples’ intervention in Western lands rather than the reverse; and centering holistic understandings in Swiss nature conservation. Using adaptations of the Three Horizons Framework (3H) and Two-Eyed Seeing, we co-developed protocols, practices, and methods (PPMs) to re-visibilize human-human/-nature connections.
This 3-hour workshop facilitates mutual knowledge exchange by drawing on our experiences and working with participants’ projects. It combines short conceptual inputs with individual and small-group activities. In the first half, participants will work with 3H and Two-Eyed Seeing using one of their own projects. In the second half, they will experiment with our PPMs.
Intended outcomes include improved capacity to work with multiple knowledge systems and to ‘re-visibilize’ relations, supported by practical examples from participants’ projects. Participants will also gain hands-on experience with our methods and tools to apply in their contexts.

Ecosystem restoration has been gaining ground, notably since the launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration in 2019. Several principles and standards exist for restoration. While these may refer to "stakeholder engagement", they remain extremely weak and insufficient to guide practitioners when it comes to truly, effectively and equitably collaborating with Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IP&LCs) to define, agree and collaborate on ecosystem restoration initiatives. Through the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) we have been exploring good practices for restoration and IP&LCs from planning, through to implementation and securing positive outcomes. In this workshop we will discuss the good practices identified through our work using illustrative case studies.
a) duration: 90 min., b) goal: integration of IP&LCs in large-scale ecosystem restoration practice being promoted under the various global targets; and c) expected outcomes: shared understanding of good practices in IP&LCs and ecosystem restoration.

Non-material Nature’s Contributions to People (NCPs) play a crucial role in shaping how societies value and interact with biodiversity. Yet these contributions are often difficult to assess and underrepresented in science-policy and decision-making contexts.
This session brings together researchers from the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research, United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, the Leibniz Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and the Institute for Social-Ecological Research, who are engaged in collaborative efforts to better integrate non-material NCPs into biodiversity science, policy and practice.
Building on a recent cross-institutional dialogue, the session will explore stakeholder values, trade-offs, conflicts, and scale-related challenges in assessing non-material NCPs and their implications for policy making. Participants will share approaches and identify synergies across disciplines and institutions, with the goal of informing more inclusive and policy-relevant biodiversity research.
The session is open to researchers, practitioners and societal actors working at the science-policy interface on NCPs, ecosystem services, biodiversity governance and transformative change, including representatives of science-policy platforms, MEAs, Indigenous and local knowledge holders and biodiversity decision-makers. Contributors will share conceptual insights and applied approaches, highlighting synergies between different disciplines and institutions. The emphasis will be on how these contributions can inform more inclusive, value-sensitive and policy-relevant biodiversity planning and decision-making. The aim is to contribute to bridging the gap between conceptual work and actionable insights for addressing biodiversity challenges.

This session explores the potential of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in effectively supporting transformative change. Coined as a term for the protection, restoration or sustainable use of ecosystems to address several societal challenges simultaneously, NbS can tackle related underlying problems or root causes for a fundamental and system-wide reorganisation across technological, economic and social factors. This especially applies when their implementation challenges existing mindsets, value systems, human-non-human-nature relationships and institutional barriers, and creates space(s) for new, collaborative governance approaches. Many current environmental and planning decisions are, however, shaped by long-standing perspectives, habits, power structures, and institutional rules that often reinforce an unsustainable status quo. These path dependencies and lock-ins can hinder innovation, limit inclusion, affect viability, and delay needed systemic changes, esp. for a more nature-positive economy. According to our recently collected insights, this refers to a combination of entrenched structural and cultural barriers, incl. rigid regulations and slow policy processes, conflicting mandates and poor coordination across governance levels, chronic underinvestment in maintenance, low awareness, and competing framings of NbS success that privilege short-term economic returns over ecological goals. These are further compounded by tensions between the urban-rural divide, locally adapted interventions that strengthen community engagement and large-scale approaches that promise a wide reach and impact, and by the lack of consistent mechanisms, whether regulatory or incentive-based, that can sustain NbS over time and maintain fairness in who benefits and who bears the costs.

SIGN-UP LINK: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe0-R62bXRtDqOn8j4oSvQpYICOY2tpswVQTKLbUV3rv6CSfA/viewform?usp=dialog

The call for transformative governance in biodiversity conservation is growing. Global biodiversity governance is shifting toward greater scrutiny and support for non-traditional actors and deeper interaction between public and private entities—from the bottom up, rather than focusing solely on legal regimes and state-centric practices.

This “whole-of-society approach” is central to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). As emphasized in the CBD Action Agenda for Nature and People, not only national governments and international organizations, but also sub-national authorities, businesses, Indigenous peoples, local communities, researchers, and NGOs—so-called “middle-out” actors—are increasingly participating in biodiversity efforts.

Challenges remain: translating this approach into local practice, preventing unintended effects like greenwashing or sectoral leakage, and aligning fragmented institutions. Governance innovation is critical. Without equitable distribution of governance capacity, the whole-of-society approach risks becoming a “nobody’s approach.” Capacity must be built across three domains: enabling rules, shared discourses, and access to essential resources. This fosters a polycentric system grounded in accountability, transparency, justice, equity, and sustainability.

This session explores theoretical debates, conceptual innovations, and empirical insights into how this approach is adopted. We examine the roles of non-state actors, their networks, and agency in co-designing biodiversity solutions. We invite experts to share research, practical experience, and policy insights to help advance the GBF and foster collaboration for change.

Addressing the biodiversity crisis requires transformative change. The sustainability research community is responding with applied transdisciplinary and co-created futures research, which aims to define and/or evaluate desirable visions for and pathways to achieve positive futures for people and nature. This research offers insights to decision makers while facilitating learning across diverse disciplines and worldviews. As a rapidly evolving field, transdisciplinary futures research is an exciting domain of methodological innovation, bringing together systems approaches, participatory methods, creative practice and integrated modelling. This session aims to generate shared learning on the research process – how framing and methodological choices were made and with what impact on outcomes – to accelerate advancement of the field. We will assemble presentations from diverse researchers and practitioners who have experimented with novel transdisciplinary methods to develop and evaluate desirable biodiversity-centric scenarios. Presenters will be asked to spotlight and critically reflect on their methods. We invite contributions from the biodiversity research community who have pursued novel transdisciplinary futures methods. We are interested in case studies that are pushing frontiers in three domains: 1) applying systems approaches to explore trade-offs, synergies and complexities across scenario trajectories, 2) incorporating imaginative or inspirational methods to ‘open up’ consideration of novel scenarios and 3) grappling with the challenges in linking rich participant views on ‘desirable’ futures into broader aims including modelling. Through bridging diverse contexts, we hope to steward future directions that can better inform and enable transformation.

We know what causes biodiversity loss, i.e. the human activities resulting in overuse and exploitation of nature, climate change, pollution and invasion of alien species. What we seem to focus less on are the reasons beneath the causes – why did we start and continue those activities? What choices and assumptions led to the development of the trampling juggernaut of our current economic system, where it is impossible for a middle-class Westerner to go through a normal day without causing environmental damage? What alternatives could there have been – and more importantly, what kinds of axioms could underpin the creation of such economic systems that would enable us to co-exist with other species, or at least function within the planetary boundaries?

This session calls for discussion about the philosophical and historical crossroads where we chose to build our advances on assumptions that have turned out to lead to a dead-end. Through highlighting the role of axiomatic choices in the past, the aim is to assess the underpinnings of our current systems and start envisioning alternative axioms onto which we can ground more sustainable futures.

We call for e.g. post-structuralist articles exploring the roots of our current predicament or envisioning alternative pasts, presents or futures. For example, how would the economy look like if humans had been viewed as something other than Homo Economicus in the 19th century? How would our society look like if instead of utilitarianism, we had chosen virtue ethics? We welcome papers not only outlining the need for transformation but going deeper into reflecting the fundamental building blocks of both our current unsustainable systems and possible sustainable ones.

Societies are experiencing an extinction of direct nature experiences, leading to a deepened disconnect from biodiversity. At the same time, more of our shared meaning-making, knowledge formation, and agency creation now happens in digital spaces – nature values not being an exception. While digital media are often portrayed as part of the problem, they also hold untapped potential to foster new forms of reconnection and care for nature.

This session takes Digital Relational Nature Values and Digital Environmental Stewardship as an entry point to explore the broader social–ecological digital interface (Langemeyer & Calcagni, 2022). Drawing on insights from the BIG-5 project (Fostering Internet-based Values of the Environment, www.big-5.eu), we invite external contributions that investigate how digital media shape people’s relationships with nature, and how these can be mobilized to support biodiversity protection. We welcome contributions that share conceptual, methodological, empirical, or practical insights, including (but not limited to):

• Digital mediation of nature experiences and value creation
• Digital-physical conservation and restoration interactions (e.g. value-action gap)
• Innovative approaches at the intersection of social–ecological systems and digital technologies
• Opportunities and risks of digital engagement for representing the needs of humans and other species in biodiversity restoration planning

Intended Outcome
The session discussion aims at an advanced understanding of how to turn digital media influence into tangible biodiversity benefits. By sharing diverse perspectives, the session aims to build a community of researchers and practitioners engaging with the amphibious realm of social–ecological digital realities.

As biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation accelerate, restoration has become a central strategy to reverse ecological damage and ensure long-term sustainability. However, the legal frameworks governing restoration remain fragmented and weakly enforced. Strengthening coordination between international and national laws is critical to achieving the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
This session explores how international environmental law can support restoration by better integrating with national legal systems. It examines both normative and institutional dimensions of restoration across national and international legal frameworks, with a focus on coordination.
We invite contributions that explore ecosystem restoration across diverse environments, focusing on:
1. The legal basis for restoration under multilateral environmental agreements (e.g. CBD, Ramsar Convention, UNCCD, UNCLOS) and their operational mechanisms;
2. The formulation, assessment, and reporting and monitoring of restoration plans under treaty regimes, and how these obligations are integrated into national laws;
3. Jurisdictional and sovereignty challenges in restoration implementation, including coordination between States and among central and subnational authorities;
4. The roles of international organizations, treaty bodies, dispute settlement mechanisms, NGOs, and private actors in developing and enforcing restoration-related norms at international and national levels;
5. Innovative legal approaches at national and international levels to scale up restoration, including rights-based frameworks, due diligence duties, and ecosystem-based obligations.