How people relate to and see themselves as part of nature relations differs worldwide and often depends on culture and worldviews. Nonetheless, challenging the dominant Euro-Western epistemic domination is needed to attain more equitable and sustainable future visions. This change entails fostering decolonial mediation between different knowledge systems in a context of intersectional difference. The collective struggles of Black, Indigenous, and other Women of Color (BIWOC) for self-determination shed light on pathways of decolonial mediations and how to attain epistemic equity when thinking about the future. Echoing the call of BIWOC to use decoloniality in knowledge co-creation, we co-created a border space together with 20 BIWOC in the Putumayo department of Colombia. In this space, we jointly envisioned three radical visions of the Amazon through scenario-building exercises between 2022 and 2023. Storytelling is a powerful tool to capture the BIWOC’s differentiated experience of the world and to explore their individual and collective emancipation from different forms of oppression. Decolonial mediations support the (co-)design of a “safe enough” space for questioning and rethinking Euro-Western domination. Our research also indicates that incorporating decolonial praxis into sustainability transformation research can allow for a more radical envisioning of the future.

Prevailing frameworks to address planetary environmental challenges tend to focus on setting goals, targets, or boundaries to limit human harm to ecosystems or species. Here we propose an aspirational approach aimed at empowering people to shape a better future for all of life on Earth. We do this by building on the human development approach and its supporting metrics, especially the Human Development Index (HDI), a broadly influential framework that has contributed to decades of human progress by measuring and promoting people’s capabilities to lead the lives that they value. Rather than assessing the state or dynamics of the biosphere, we propose the Nature Relationship Index (NRI), which would focus on measuring the progress of nations towards delivering mutually beneficial relationships among people and the rest of the living world in terms that people widely understand and value. Through an open-ended process informed by expert consultation, international concept testing and indicator development, the NRI could help to incentivize progress towards a world in which humanity thrives together with the rest of life on Earth. We explore the challenges and opportunities of developing a robust NRI and invite broader participation to facilitate this development in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report.

Earth system tipping points pose existential threats to current and future generations, both human and non-human, with those least responsible for causing them facing the greatest risks. “Positive” social tipping points (that we shorten to positive tipping points, or PTPs) are often deliberate interventions into social systems with the aim of rapidly mitigating the risks of Earth system tipping. However, the desire to intervene should neither increase risks nor perpetuate unjust or inequitable outcomes through the creation of sacrifice zones. In this paper, we argue that considerations of what needs to change, who is being asked to change, and where and by whom the impacts of change will be felt are fundamental and normative questions that require reflexivity and systemic understanding of decision-making across scales. All actors have a role to play in ensuring that justice, equity, and ethics are carefully considered before any intervention. Enabling positive tipping points for radical transformations would thus benefit from more diverse perspectives, with a particular emphasis on the inclusion of marginalized voices in offering solutions. We conclude that taking a cautious approach to positive tipping interventions, including careful consideration of distributional and unintended consequences, and stepping back to explore all options, not just those appearing to offer a quick fix, could lead to more equitable and sustainable outcomes.

We propose the framework of ‘chains of leverage’. It is an operationalisation to understand and analyse the transformative potential of social-ecological systems and identify leverage points for sustainability transformations through a concrete four-step approach. Step 1: Analysing the social-ecological system regarding its core elements across system depth. Elements in a system can be situated at different system depths (from shallow to deep) relating to system parameters, feedbacks, designs and intents. Step 2: Highlighting interactions and relationships between these elements across system depth; identifying if the relationship between elements can be categorised as dominant or alternative (suppressed), and if these elements are in contrast with each other; scrutinising the system for destructive elements or events. Step 3: Linking elements to ascertain if there are (coherent) chains of leverage. We define a ‘chain of leverage’ as a situation within a system in which multiple elements across system depths and governance levels have synergistic impact on each other. This step assesses how one type of change in a system might precipitate further changes across different system depths. Hence, we may find sequences of how shallow, mid-level and deep system elements flow on from and reinforce one another, creating a chain of leverage, which may be in conflict with an alternative chain of leverage. Step 4: Identifying leverage points to intervene either to (i) create a coherent chain of leverage that fosters sustainability, (ii) strengthen a currently weak element or chain that fosters sustainability, (iii) deconstruct or disempower existing, unsustainable elements or chains and (iv) eliminate or weaken disruptive elements that can negatively influence the sustainability of the system. Many systems are locked in unsustainable states, and we have yet to find ways to shift onto pathways for sustainability. The framework of chains of leverage can facilitate such a shift through helping to understand a system's transformative potential and to identify a coherent set of leverage points for sustainability transformation. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Transformative change is required to secure a liveable future for people and nature. The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) is a heuristic tool for supporting the creation of plural visions of nature-positive futures that build shared motivation for transformative change. Integrating nexus approaches with the NFF highlights the foundational role of biodiversity in supporting desirable outcomes across sectors (i.e. the biodiversity nexus). We bring these areas of biodiversity research together to ask: what could plural nature-positive futures for Europe in 2050 look like that explicitly leverage synergies in the biodiversity nexus? To address this, we co-created nature futures for Europe with 26 participants representing diverse sectors and regions, resulting in three visions underpinned by different value perspectives: Dòigh Nàdair: The way of nature (Nature as Culture), NaturAll (Nature for Nature) and Return to Nature (Nature for Society). Subsequent analyses and a follow-up webinar enriched the visions, identifying opportunities for more synergistic nexus interactions. Our findings highlight how plural visioning processes can generate distinct visions with positive nexus synergies enabled by unique indirect drivers (e.g. biodiversity-food synergies enabled by re-ruralisation and spiritual human-nature connections in ‘Dòigh Nàdair’, technological advancements in ‘Return to Nature’ and mimicking natural ecological processes in ‘NaturAll’). Yet, the visions also share common features (e.g. restored ecosystems and participatory governance) underpinned by overlapping value perspectives. We demonstrate how explicit consideration of the biodiversity nexus in visioning processes can reveal opportunities to align biodiversity goals with broader sectoral priorities, thereby helping sustain ambitious biodiversity outcomes amid diverse and competing agendas.

Pandemics pose a global threat to human wellbeing, justice, economies, and ecosystems and are comparable with other planetary crises such as climate change and biodiversity loss in terms of urgency and impact. The global community would benefit from a dedicated scientific synthesis body to assess pandemic risks and solutions. In this Personal View, we explore proposals for an Intergovernmental Panel on Pandemics and assess potential pathways to its creation. Learning lessons from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) might help national governments and international organisations to chart a course through important decisions about format, governance, operations, scientific scope and process, and ability to recommend policies that make the world safer.

Nature-based climate solutions tend to overlook Africa’s diverse contexts and development priorities. We propose six guiding principles centred on the aspirations of African peoples, recognizing the cultural connection of communities to their environments and the role of biodiversity in sustaining livelihoods and identities.

Economic sectors that drive nature decline are heavily subsidized and produce large environmental externalities. Calls are increasing to reform or eliminate subsidies and internalize the environmental costs of these sectors. We compile data on subsidies and externalities across six sectors driving biodiversity loss—agriculture, fossil fuels, forestry, infrastructure, fisheries and aquaculture, and mining. The most updated estimates suggest that subsidies to these sectors total between US$1.7 and US$3.2 trillion annually, while environmental externalities range between US$10.5 and US$22.6 trillion annually. Moreover, data gaps suggest that these figures underestimate the global magnitude of subsidies and externalities. We discuss the need and opportunities of building a baseline to account for the costs of subsidies and externalities of economic activities driving nature decline. A better understanding of the complexity, size, design, and effects of subsidies and externalities of such economic sectors could facilitate and expedite discussions to strengthen multilateral rules for their reform.

This paper examines the pathways to desirable nature futures as envisioned by 22 young people from all United Nations regions and diverse cultural backgrounds who participated in the second edition of the IPBES Youth workshop (2022). The workshop employed the Three Horizons framework and the Nature Futures Framework (NFF) to describe the plurality of youth visions for desirable nature futures and transformative pathways to achieve these visions. Based on the outcomes of the workshop, we conducted a qualitative content analysis categorizing the ideas and quantitatively assessed commonalities and differences among workshop groups, which were based on the NFF perspectives (nature for nature, nature for society, nature as culture, and a group in between perspectives). There were important differences in the visions and pathways articulated by the groups, but also commonalities, such as the importance of governance, community-based approaches, and education for achieving desirable nature futures. We also discuss the importance of flexibility in the NFF to accommodate diverse perspectives and involvement of youth in shaping global sustainability agendas. While many ideas raised by young people during this workshop align with existing conservation narratives, the study reveals the need to foster new and innovative ideas to drive transformative change that is sensitive to diverse contexts, histories, and experiences.

. The importance of connectedness in laying the ground for social-ecological transformations or in spreading new ideas and practices for transformation is increasingly recognized. However, the role of networks in supporting the emergence and growth of seeds (initiatives with the potential to positively shape the future) has not yet been comprehensively studied empirically. To this end, we introduce a novel concept, the seeds' substrate, to characterize: (1) the relationships among a network of seeds, (2) the support needed for seeds to appropriately scale and coalesce, and (3) the actors that enable and provide support. The seeds' substrate concept was theoretically informed and empirically derived by using a case study of an ongoing coalescing process. On this basis, we derived several categories and definitions for seeds interactions, types of support, and supporting actors that collectively constitute the seeds' substrate. Specifically, we identified seven types of interactions between seeds, nine types of support, and 14 different categories of supporting actors. Furthermore, we presented a multi-level network approach to analyze the seeds' substrate and test specific hypotheses within this modeling approach. By putting the seeds' substrate concept into practice in an ongoing coalescence process involving 11 seeds around the small-scale fisheries food system in Uruguay, we identified the network of seeds and the constellations of actors and interactions that preceded efforts to deliberately foster a seed coalition. This allowed us to anticipate synergies and conflicts and to identify key supporting actors that structure the seed substrate. In addition, we derived a comprehensive baseline against which to quantitatively compare the unfolding of the coalescence process over time. This paper contributes to filling a gap in the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes literature and unpacks a key but largely unexplored subprocess of its theory of change: the transition from periods of experimentation to periods of coalescence. We expect the seeds' substrate concept to be useful in a wide and diverse range of socialecological contexts.