What makes change ‘transformative’? How useful is the term ‘polycrisis’ for the global challenges we face today? How do we narrow the gap between knowledge about global sustainability challenges and transformative action? What is the role of Higher Education in societal transformations? How can we co-create just and sustainable futures? Whose voices and knowledge count in that co-creation? How do we stop reproducing the status quo that supports the escalation of the ‘polycrisis’?

These were some of the many questions discussed in various formats at the TC/ESG25 Conference in August 2025. Held in Johannesburg, South Africa, the conference was a collaboration between the Transformations Community (TC), the Earth System Governance Project (ESG), and Wits University. Over 400 participants from over 50 countries assembled to weave together science, policy, art, and practice. Through a mixture of workshops, performances, art exhibits, talks, and panel and world café-style discussions, participants shared and co-created knowledge about ‘Transformative Change’.

At the end of 2024, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) published the first ever global ‘Transformative Change Assessment’ (TCA). In this TCA, IPBES defines ‘Transformative Change’ as “a process that involves fundamental, system-wide shifts in views (ways of seeing, thinking and knowing), structures (ways of organizing, regulating and governing), and practices (ways of doing, behaving and relating)” (2024, p. XXVII). Many experts agree that this is the only type of change that will usher us out of this era of ‘polycrisis’ where multiple overlapping global environmental and social crises reinforce each other.

Due to the multidimensional, multi-scalar complexities of the polycrisis, experts emphasize the need for understanding the problem through multiple scientific lenses and knowledge systems. Much like a team of doctors working together on complex medical cases, co-production of new knowledge about a problem works best when those with specialized knowledge about different aspects of a problem work together to co-design solutions.

Transformative Change is a process that involves fundamental, system-wide shifts in views (ways of seeing, thinking and knowing), structures (ways of organizing, regulating and governing), and practices (ways of doing, behaving and relating).

Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), 2024

What specialized knowledge is needed for truly transformative change?

A recurring theme across many sessions at TC/ESG25 was the question of whose knowledge counts — and how power shapes that answer. One prominent approach to transformative change is through the redefinition of human-nature relations. Yet many Transdisciplinary Transformative Change Initiatives (TTCIs) working in this space carry implicit assumptions worth examining: that human-human relations are somehow inconsequential, and that nature is something we can simply ‚disconnect‘ from and then reconnect to. These assumptions contrast to holistic worldviews held by many Indigenous Peoples, for whom such separations are not only artificial but actively harmful.

My talk, «Rethinking Human-Natures: Knowledge Pluralization in a Transdisciplinary Transformative Change Initiative of Native Americans, Swiss nature conservation practitioners, and university researchers,» engaged directly with these tensions. I presented findings from my SNSF Spark “FIRI” project, a 1.5-year collaboration that brought together Native American knowledge-holders, Swiss nature conservation practitioners, and university researchers to address nature conservation challenges in Switzerland.

How can different knowledge systems support, rather than suppress each other?

Crucially, our project inverted the typical dynamic: rather than researchers travelling to Indigenous communities to extract knowledge, we invited the intervention of Indigenous Peoples in Western lands. Centering holistic understandings of the world, and using approaches such as the Three Horizons Framework and Two-Eyed Seeing, our team co-developed a power-attentive and procedurally-specific guideline for re-visibilizing human-human and human-nature connections.

This required grappling honestly with how power operates in knowledge production. Previous TTCIs have engaged Indigenous perspectives, but often in ways that result in knowledge extraction or the subordination of those perspectives to Western scientific frameworks. Our aim was to actively resist this tendency by interweaving — rather than merely including — the experiences and knowledges of Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics and practitioners alike.

The lessons from this collaboration speak to something much broader than one research project. If transformative change requires fundamental shifts in how we see, organize, and act in the world, then it must also require a fundamental rethinking of who gets to shape that knowledge. The TC/ESG25 Conference made clear that this question is not peripheral to the work of transformation — it is central to it.

If transformative change requires fundamental shifts in how we see, organize, and act in the world, then it must also require a fundamental rethinking of who gets to shape that knowledge.

Sierra Deutsch

Why does (geographical) location matter for interweaving knowledges?

I presented the FIRI project in a “Speed Talk” format where presenters introduce their ideas in a 7-minute presentation, followed by World Café-style discussions, where attendees join presenters for a more in-depth discussion. Presenting at the TC/ESG25 in this way allowed for deeper engagement and lively discussions with attendees, rather than the traditional, often one-sided Q&A format. These discussions continued beyond the session as people continued to approach me to exchange ideas during other sessions, as well as lunch and dinner events. Likewise, attending the conference in person allowed me to do the same with other attendees, creating a lively communal space for sharing and co-producing ideas that would not have been possible in an online format.

Moreover, I had attended the TCX-York Conference – a sister conference in York in June 2025. Due to two separate conferences, one located in the Global North, the other in the Global South, the conferences were largely attended according to their accessibility for attendees. This created a stark contrast, in my opinion. The communal feeling was present at both conferences, as has been my experience at conferences hosted by the Transformative Change Community. However, I left TCX-York feeling that something was missing. That something became clear during my attendance at TC/ESG25.

While most experts agree that the crises that make up the ‘polycrisis’ are interrelated in the sense that they reinforce and exacerbate each other, many experts argue that the interconnections go beyond this. The TCA made clear that at least some share the same origins rooted in a profit-driven global economic system that prioritizes short-term gains, facilitates enormous concentrations of wealth, and relies heavily on relations of domination among humans and the rest of nature. Dealing with power imbalances at the center of the polycrisis is clearly essential. You can read more about why in the piece I wrote for SCNAT’s Guide for Global Partnerships.

While these power imbalances were discussed at TCX-York, I had the sense that they were more of an add-on than a core focus for Transformative Change. This was not so at TC/ESG25, where discussions about power were not only highlighted in the inputs, but the organization of the conference itself aimed to balance power among attendees (e.g. by maximizing diversity across backgrounds). As a result, I found TC/ESG25 to be full of unconventional and power-attentive approaches to Transformative Change. Several publications are emerging from this conference, among them a Special Collection on Sustainability Transformations Towards Justice and Equity: Navigating diversity across space and time in Global Sustainability. Based on my talk, I was invited to submit a manuscript, which I co-authored with the full FIRI team. While the manuscript is currently under review, you can find more information on our project website Rethinking Human-Natures in the meantime.

For this trip, the taxes on flight-related CO₂ emissions imposed under the Faculty of Science’ Sustainable Travel Policy were covered by the GIUZ Justice Fund (internal link, only accessible via UZH-VPN). The fund is financed by monies that are partially returned to the department from the flight tax paid to the MNF. All grant recipients are asked to write a post for publication in the GIUZ Blog.

Sierra Deutsch, Space, Nature and Society