Transformation beyond sustainable development

Transformation in a troubled world

The notion of 'development' is often traced back to the mid-20th century, including W. W. Rostow's linear model of growth from traditional society to mass consumption society, and President Truman's Four Point Programme of 1949 that launched international aid for 'underdeveloped' countries. But this was only the beginning of a particular era in a process that started much earlier: Europe's transition from feudalism to modern society and the colonial expansion of this particular social order from the 18th century onwards.

Until recently, the 1992 Rio Earth Summit was considered to be the latest marker of such an epochal shift in this process of modernisation: a shift from national state-centred development under Cold War conditions to a global paradigm of sustainable development defined by multilateralism, neoliberal economic policies, and collaborative governance structures that would harmonise social welfare (people), ecological sustainability (planet) and capitalism (profit). However, multiple changes suggest that we might no longer live in this period. Multilateralism is being undercut by the aggressive assertion of authoritarian nationalism; soaring inequalities fuel populist resentment against 'the elite' and motivate the closing of borders for fear of economic competition and the inflow of distressed migrants; and the harmonious promises of sustainability sound increasingly hollow against the backdrop of planetary disruptions that environmental governance frameworks clearly fail to control.

Are we entering a new era, and if so, what are its defining characteristics? Competing answers to this question have different political and practical implications. For some, there is no epochal shift, but only intensified challenges that require better ways of addressing them, for instance, by adapting multilateral institutions to more conflictual geopolitical dynamics, by making social welfare policies more efficient and border controls more restrictive, or by investing more in renewable energy, creating new and better managed natural protected areas, and so on. Others see existential risks such as climate change or massive biodiversity loss as drivers of a 'positive Anthropocene' - a new era in which techno-scientific responses to these risks propel modern civilisation to new heights. While the most pessimistic observers see a 'negative Anthropocene' in which the destructive side-effects of modern development (including of techno-scientific solutionism) push humanity into a phase of collapse, another group sees both destructive and emancipatory forces at play in a new era in which the modern order itself is increasingly destabilised by the effects of its inherent unsustainability.

While these debates go well beyond the scope of TEGA, they play a crucial role in our approach to transformative change. For addressing the shortcomings and dysfunctions of environmental governance frameworks anchored in the sustainable development paradigm requires a clear understanding of where these frameworks come from, how deep the problems they fail to contain are, and which coordinates should guide our efforts to transform them for the better.

Should TEGA invest its resources in designing more effective/ efficient ABS frameworks, in order to enhance the contribution of ABS to the achievement of sustainable development goals? Or is the sustainable development paradigm itself outdated, because its flawed assumptions and unrealistic promises end up legitimising unsustainable modernisation? If this is the case, what do we want transformation to achieve? Which ways of seeing the world, inhabiting the earth, and doing politics can guide our work?

Following this approach, the TEGA team spends a great deal of time reviewing the relevant literature and debating, both internally and with the diverse members of the CoP, transformation within vs. beyond modern development. The insights gained from these reflections not only inform the design and practice of TEGA's action research method. They also contribute to guiding our activities for tangible transformative change in the field of ABS.

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This scientific report provides more insights into TEGA's analysis of the current situation and its implications for transformative change.

Entry points for transformation in the field of ABS

There is a broad scientific and political consensus that the international objectives of biodiversity governance – mainly nature conservation, sustainable use, and equitable benefit sharing – are not being met. In 2019, the Global Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) concluded that achieving these goals would require “transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors” and outlined "pathways" to guide such transformative changes. Other reports advocating transformative change followed, including the Global Biodiversity Outlook and the Local Biodiversity Outlook of 2020, and the Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature published by IPBES in 2022 (see below).

The 2022 Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) incorporates these insights into its normative language, including by defining its core purpose as “to catalyse, enable and galvanize urgent and transformative action by Governments, and subnational and local authorities, with the involvement of all of society, to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, to achieve the outcomes it sets out in its Vision, Mission, Goals and Targets, and thereby contribute to the three objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity and to those of its Protocols.”

These discursive shifts in international biodiversity governance apply to ABS, which is part and parcel of the governance architecture put in place under the CBD. Moreover, most ABS stakeholders are frustrated with the outcomes of ABS frameworks. For most users of genetic resources, ABS means lengthy and costly permitting procedures and cumbersome benefit-sharing agreements. Governments from the global South tend to be disappointed by the little tangible benefits ABS has generated so far. And Indigenous Peoples and local communities often see ABS as yet another broken promise of recognition, participation, decolonial reparation and rights. For environmental stakeholders, sustainability plays an insufficient role in an ABS regime that prioritises the monetary valuation of natural resources. Moreover, technological developments around Digital Sequence Information and synthetic biology have raised new regulatory issues and uncertainties that further complicate the implementation of ABS. While these frustrations with the status quo of ABS have different sources for different stakeholders, they all fuel an interest in transformative change.

"Putting sustainability at the heart of decision-making can be supported by redefining ‘development’ and ‘good quality of life’, and recognizing the multiple ways in which people relate to each other and to nature.

… This shift in the framing of decision-making can be supported by ensuring that a more balanced range of values are considered in political and economic decisions by: (i) reducing the dominance of those broad values that mostly relate to individualism and materialism, whilst mobilizing broad values that are consistent with living in harmony with nature; and (ii) reducing the dominance of specific values to remove the dominance of market-based instrumental values, whilst mobilizing relational, intrinsic and nonmarket instrumental values.

… Various pathways can contribute to achieving just and sustainable futures, including, but not limited to, the ‘green economy’, ‘degrowth’, ‘Earth stewardship’, ‘nature protection’ and other pathways arising from diverse worldviews and knowledge systems (e.g., living well and other philosophies of good living)."

(IPBES, 2022: XVIII).

Against this backdrop, TEGA simultaneously embraces the transformative agenda outlined above to tackle the shortcomings and dysfunctions of ABS, and uses ABS as an opportune field of experimentation to derive theoretical, methodological and practical knowledge on action research as an instrument for socio-ecological transformation.

TEGA's approach to transformative change

The trends outlined above lend scientific and political legitimacy to transformative change initiatives in biodiversity governance. But established institutions also use narratives of transformation to legitimise themselves – and thus the status quo – without walking the talk or accepting to challenge and transform their own assumptions, designs and practices. To avoid contributing to the latter scenario, TEGA’s approach to transformation is mindful of three pitfalls.

The first pitfall is to believe that insufficient transformative action is caused by a lack of awareness of the gravity of the situation, and that highlighting this gravity can induce transformative change. Warnings about climate emergency, ecosystem collapse and the ongoing destruction of the habitability of the Earth usefully highlight the irrationality of doing business-as-usual. They often also trigger feelings of anxiety, anger, shame, helplessness, sadness, and/or grief. Without an appropriate setting, such feelings tend to be repressed, together with the significance of the warnings. What remains is abstract information that, by being repeated times and again, ends up being boring, as well as a latent feeling of unease that makes many of us want to look away from the trouble.

To avoid this pitfall, TEGA’s approach combines the analytical power of scientific rationality with the personal, emotional and spiritual engagement of the participants. As other experiences have shown, and as we have experienced ourselves, giving space to these dimensions can strengthen the quality of engagement of the people involved, alleviate repressed or latent obstacles to change, and release transformative energies in the dynamics of collective action.

The second pitfall is a motivational strategy that describes transformative action as a means for salvation. Narratives around a ‘sustainability transition’ often paint an idyllic future – ‘zero net CO2 emissions by 2050’, ‘circular economy’, ‘Living in Harmony with Nature’, ‘leaving no one behind’… – that can be achieved if transformative action is taken. Not only is this strategy hard to distinguish from political PR, in which institutions try to rebuild trust in their ability to solve problems. Unrealistic promises of a sustainable future also offer an inconsistent basis for transformative action.

To avoid this second pitfall, TEGA follows Donna Haraway’s famous advice to stay with the trouble, that is, to work on deciphering and transforming present realities, knowing that this is where the future emerges from – where future possibilities are created, where the world is being born. This is also why TEGA’s action research is decidedly open-ended. It is not a work-in-progress moving towards pre-defined objectives that may or may not be achieved at the end of the project. Rather, it is an exploratory work-in-process in which TEGA’s visions, objectives and strategies are being regularly reassessed, readjusted and possibly transformed.

A related third pitfall is to conceptualise transformation in terms of scientific plans and pathways that can be implemented. Of course, transformative change requires foresight and some degree of operational planning and evaluation. However, sequential plans for transformative change, coupled with sets of monitoring indicators and control mechanisms, can be counterproductive. They tend to restrain the creation of new possibilities by entrenching initial conceptions and cementing the power of those who designed the plan. Moreover, no sequential plan or blueprint can be complex enough to anticipate and model future evolutions. This is particularly true for transformative change, which by definition is particularly disruptive and unpredictable. As a result, trying to implement transformative change according to a plan hinders creative interplays with reality as it unfolds.

To avoid such counter-productive effects, TEGA’s approach to transformation is process-oriented and co-creative. Diagnostics, ideas of solutions, planned actions, as well as related rationalities, interests and norms emerge and change in relatively unexpected ways in the course of the action research. Such an approach fosters humility, curiosity, uncertainty and trust, which we believe are more favourable to transformative change than claims of authoritative expertise and attempts to plan and control the behaviour of others.