Dr. Partelow, the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment deals with the loss of biodiversity, or more precisely: the underlying causes. What exactly are these causes?
According to previous IPBES expert assessments and reports, the global decline of biodiversity is the result of unsustainable use of nature coming from political and economic decisions based on a narrow set of values. We are degrading too much habitat, changing too much land, overusing water resources and emitting too many greenhouse gases which are driving climate change that further stress natural systems.
The previous Global IPBES Assessment from 2019 concludes that transformative, system-wide change is necessary to achieve the United Nations' Vision 2050 for Biodiversity and the Sustainable Development Goals. What is meant by “transformative change”?
Transformative change means fundamental system-wide changes in the goals and organization of systems including across technology, economy and society. Key knowledge objectives would be to understand and identify factors in society at individual and collective levels, including behavioral, social, cultural, economic, institutional, and technical dimensions. This knowledge can then be leveraged to bring about transformative change through governance that can guide the behavior of people and systems towards the intended goals across different contexts, taking into account broader social and economic goals in the context of sustainable development.
What role does science play in achieving transformative change?
IPBES is an independent inter-governmental science-policy platform formed by a coalition of state governments, and is supported by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The Transformative Change Assessment is carried out by an Expert Group – of which IPBES has different groups focus on a variety of thematic areas – to structure and synthesize the scientific evidence and other relevant knowledge on the topic. The multi-disciplinary scientific expert group seeks inputs from experts on the many related topics and synthesizes that knowledge into a final report for policy organizations. Science needs to actively engage in the science-policy interface to inform transformative change, to provide evidence-informed strategies, tactics and pathways that can be effective in society.
You head the Transformation and Governance Research Area at the Center for Life Ethics. Governance enables society to implement targeted changes to living systems through rules, norms and institutions. How can science, politics and society work together to shape transformative change?
Leveraging willingness to build trust and social capital (the quantity, quality and diverse types of social relations we have) between science, policy circles and civil society is crucial. We need to start at eye-level, with respect for the experiences, knowledge, values and goals that these different groups hold. Coming into dialogue is a natural start point. From a science perspective, being transparent and inclusive in how and why we do our science in ways that include these actor groups is critical for improving the outcomes of our research, trust in the process, and ultimately the uptake of the relevant knowledge in practice by the actors who can benefit from it the most.
How can each one of us contribute?
We can be more curious and less reactive or immediately judgmental about changes or goal setting processes. Changes in society, the economy and politics are always happening – but we are often focused on a level of change that is distant from our control or leave us as needing to take a heavy burden of individual responsibility. In modern discourse around sustainability, the two centers of gravity are state-level actions or individual behavior change. However, in most of our lives our groups of friends, family, colleagues and neighborhood are more impactful in shaping us, and how we shape them. This community level – between individual and state – is essential to value and engage with. Our communities are informal and require our active engagement, and we have a lot of agency in shaping them ourselves. Becoming engaged from a place of openness and curiosity is key. As individuals in these communities, we can ask ourselves: what are my values, and why are they important to me? Do my actions reflect those values?
The complete interview can be found online here:
https://www.lifeethics.uni-bonn.de/en/news/becoming-engaged-from-a-place-of-openness-and-curiosity-is-key