Stories of transformations to sustainability

The Transformations to Sustainability programme funded 15 international research projects between 2016 and 2022 to study how social transformations to sustainability can be supported. The projects worked with communities in diverse places around the world to understand the complex relations between social structures, the material world and environmental and social change. The films and stories below present insights from the projects.

A compilation video explores some of the difficult questions around transformations to sustainability and proposes approaches to tackling the defining challenge of our times:

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The following short films and stories feature individual projects funded through the programme, and explore social transformations in areas ranging from conservation and governance to artisanal and small-scale mining and intellectual property.

• ▶️ Convivial Conservation: A transformative, whole-Earth approach to environmental conservation
• ▶️ Transforming a destructive industry into a sustainable economic and human activity
• ▶️ Local initiatives resisting powerful forces of change in the Amazon
• ▶️ Collectively imagining the future – a key to governance for social transformations
• ▶️ The potential of intellectual property regimes to accelerate sustainability transitions
• ▶️ The transformative potential of localized land-registration in conflict-affected areas
• 📃 Agents of change: Spotlight on place-based sustainability initiatives in the Amazon
• 📃 Your move: can migration spur positive change for people and ecosystems?
• 📃 Convivial conservation: making space for apex predators
• 📃 “You can’t just plunk in renewables and call it a sustainable solution”
• 📃 Netting new and old insights for a resilient future: Elevating place-based knowledge for climate adaptation
• 📃 Ideas worth spreading: How intellectual property can facilitate sustainability transitions
• 📃 TRUEPATH: Achieving a triple bottom line in agricultural frontiers
• 📃 Gold Matters: Co-labouring to visualize transformation in mining worlds
• 📃 Uncloaking the invisibility of groundwater
• 📃 Choose the course, or go with the flow? Reimagining hydrological futures in peri-urban India
• 📃 Waterproofing Data: Pollinators in data gardens
• 📃 Beyond ‘rights on paper’: challenges of localizing land registration in conflict-affected regions

The Transformations to Sustainability (T2S) programme funded 15 state-of-the-art international research projects between 2016 and 2022 to produce action-oriented knowledge on how social transformations to sustainability can be supported.

A Belmont Forum–NORFACE–International Science Council partnership funded twelve international research projects from 2018 to 2022, building on an earlier programme launched by the International Social Science Council that funded three ‘Transformative Knowledge Networks’ from 2016 to 2019.

Find out more about the T2S programme on its dedicated website.

Contact: [email protected]