Sign up

Stories of transformations to sustainability

Climate change, environmental degradation and resource pressures have reached unprecedented levels worldwide. Achieving sustainability will depend on rapid and fundamental transformations in the ways we organize our societies and interact with the natural environment.

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:

Play video

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.


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]

Skip to content