Transformative Change for Biodiversity & Equity Project CONCEPTS TO UNDERSTAND & RESEARCH TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE FOR BIODIVERSITY & EQUITY Verina Ingram, Wageningen University & Research verina.ingram@wur.nl Valerie Nelson, NRI, University of Greenwich V.J.Nelson@greenwich.ac.uk Thirza Hermans, Wageningen University & Research thirze.hermans@wur.nl Albertine Vandenbussche, Wageningen University & Research albertine.vandenbussche@wur.nl Marina Benitez Kanter , Wageningen University & Research marina.benitezkanter@wur.nl Jeremy Haggar, NRI, University of Greenwich J.P.Haggar@greenwich.ac.uk Transformative Change for Biodiversity & Equity Project Presentation at 2023 Radboud Conference on Earth System Governance, Nijmegen: Food System Transformation Imaginaries and Policy Paradigms Session, 25 October 2023

1. CONCEPTS TO UNDERSTAND & RESEARCH
TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE FOR BIODIVERSITY &
EQUITY
Verina Ingram, Wageningen University & Research verina.ingram@wur.nl
Valerie Nelson, NRI, University of Greenwich V.J.Nelson@greenwich.ac.uk
Thirza Hermans, Wageningen University & Research thirze.hermans@wur.nl
Albertine Vandenbussche, Wageningen University & Research albertine.vandenbussche@wur.nl
Marina Benitez Kanter , Wageningen University & Research marina.benitezkanter@wur.nl
Jeremy Haggar, NRI, University of Greenwich J.P.Haggar@greenwich.ac.uk
TransformativeChangefor
Biodiversity & Equity Project
Presentation at 2023 Radboud Conference on Earth System Governance, Nijmegen: Food System Transformation Imaginaries and
Policy Paradigms Session, 25 October 2023

2. 2
Dja, Cameroon
Dja, Cameroon
Scale: 1:5400000
Dja, Cameroon
Mt Kenya, Kenya
Mau-Mara, Kenya
Magdalena, Colombia
Caribe, Colombia

3. Alternative
transformation
pathways ?
Deep, systemic
changes needed

4. Environmental
drivers & disturbances
Tipping points, landuse change, pollution,
alien & exotic species, climate changes
Social
drivers & disturbances
Demographics, values, norms, behaviour,
economic, technological, institutions
Social systems
Human well being
Households/Groups
Institutions
Values
Ecological systems
Biodiversity
Ecological processes
Ecosystems
EQUITY BIODIVERSITY
LAND(SCAPE) - FOOD TERRITORY
GOVERNANCE
VALUE
CHAIN
GOVERNANCE
Consumers
Manufacturers
Wholesalers
Traders
Harvesters &
Farmers
Finance,
investors
&
investment
flows
telecoupled links
Systems & Structures

5. 5
• Limited attention to plural meanings,
futures and politics e.g. movements,
culture and other understandings and
knowledges on food and power
inequalities
• Relationality not explicit eg historical
root causes incl colonialism, that
knowledge is generated in situated
contexts and co-produced by actors
• Underrecognize positionality,
assumptions & values of researchers in
co-development process with diverse
human and non-human actors.
Transformational change
CIAT
Inner transformation
(plural values,
worldviews, culture)
Em - Powerment
pathways (contesting
power structures,
capacity building)
Knowledge-based
(techno-scientific)
Systems (levers and
leverage points &
processes, cascading
effects)
Governance -ing
(institutions,
regulations, policy)

6. • Offers alternative, nuanced
understandings of places and distant,
blurred and entangled, trans-scale
linkages, infused with power and plural
meanings and values (May et al. 2022)
• Challenges dominant scientific and
colonial-modernity perspectives (West
et al 2022, Walsh et al 2021) to re-work
and re-think conventional research
practices and modernist assumptions
• Envisions co-produced, collective
inquiry to address societal concerns
Relational perspective on transformations
Food territories: relational and transcalar concept, connected through
geography, culture, history, and governance’ (May et al 2022)
Foggin et al. 2021

7. • Land(scapes) directly or indirectly
shaped by value chains and trends in
distant places, influencing flows, costs
and benefits of products, ecosystem
goods and services, and values - often
spatially distant across the globe (Hull
and Liu, 2018, Persson & Mertz 2019).
• Recognizes power and governance
• Recognizes how transitions in one place
affect/drive agricultural intensification
and environmental deterioration in
another, leading to new inequalities and
interdependencies (Llopiz et al., 2019)
• Huge mixed toolbox of methodologies
to operationalize and frame telecoupling
Telecoupling offers a phenomenon, a conceptual framework and methodological
approaches
Telecoupled food systems
(Hermans et al 2023)
Telecoupled: socioeconomic and environmental impacts of the
interactions between distant, coupled human and natural systems.

8. Addressing
power
inequalities
Co-produced knowledge
Co-producing processes with multiple stakeholders
always requires reflexivity & decisions which influence
power relations and political structures
Relationality theory
New theoretical perspectives &
practical methodologies
to solve societal problems

9. Plural knowledge & values perspective
• Recognises plural pathways to change
• Enables questioning concentrations of power
and wealth from different perspectives
• Requires new methods and processes
• Generates situated knowledge useful to
stakeholders
• Reflexivity to explicitly explore ethical and
political tensions in methods & concepts
• Transdisciplinary unsettles disciplinary
boundaries
• Requires embracing discomfort & exploring
tensions

10. 10
Entry points on where and how to change systems
BUT
• Reductionist - oversimplifies complex systems
• Non-linear, emergent and unpredictable change
processes
• Challenging to isolate & target specific leverage
points
• Little empirical evidence
• Requires attention to social, cultural and political
dimensions of change
Transdisciplinary approach to give space to plural
forms of knowledge, values and ways of being
Future making that recognizes past injustices and
doesn’t reinforce orthodoxies
Toolbox of methodologies that help reduce
researcher bias & counter hegemonies
Leverage points & processes
Davelaar (2021), Abson et al (2017)
Reconnecting people to nature
Rethinking how knowledge created & used in
pursuit of sustainability
Restructuring institutions

11. • Assumes purposive transformation, achieved remaking through
constructing technological, social or cultural solutions.
• Better understand whether and how existing institutions, forms
of knowledge, practices & power structures can be
deconstructed and how new pluralist approaches can be
generated.
• TCforBE thus focuses on telecoupled food systems/territories
and places; using conceptual framework on transformative
change which embraces plurality and relationality, challenging
orthodoxies in techno-scientific-market perspectives and actor
configurations in relation to food, land, conservation, and
economic transformations.
• Use transdisciplinary processes to engage and connect actors
and build scenarios.
• Sees learning and research as way of catalysing change by
introducing new thinking and actions that give space for plural
convivial values, and promote processes which amplify how to live
well together in a biodiverse world
CONCEPTS TO UNDERSTAND & RESEARCH TRANSFORMATIVE
CHANGE FOR BIODIVERSITY & EQUITY