The report “Responding to Biodiversity Loss in a Changing Climate” was commissioned by the Norwegian Environment Agency and explores how climate change and biodiversity loss are two of the most pressing challenges to a sustainable and thriving world. Despite increasing recognition that the two problems are in fact related, they are seldom viewed and approached as interlinked outcomes stemming from similar drivers of change.
Furthermore, they are most often framed as environmental problems without sufficient consideration for the social and human dimensions that shape these drivers at all levels. This results in fragmented, partial, and sometimes counterproductive actions that do not address the root causes of the problems.
“The question then becomes, what can we do right now to address these interlinked crises?“
Addressing multiple problems together calls for integrative approaches to transformative change that are robust, actionable, aligned, and results-oriented.
The report draws on insights from the transformations literatures linked to climate change and sustainability, and discusses an integrative approach based on the “Three Spheres of Transformation,” a framework that highlights interactions among practical, political, and personal spheres.
Rather than prescribing specific policies, such an approach focuses on how to generate new patterns for responding in ways that are aligned with global goals, while simultaneously being sensitive to local contexts and scale dynamics.
Generating new patterns involves frameworks for action based on new ways of perceiving agency, time and scale. The integrative approach presented in the report can complement current understandings of the determinants of transformative change and contribute to actions that generate results.
Read the full report here >>