How can we transform our societies to live in harmony with nature?
On Monday, April 7, 2025, a half-day session was held to present the findings of the IPBES assessment on Transformative Change. This event, organized by the technical support unit for the assessment of the Structuring Programs Department of the University of Montpellier since 2022, provided an opportunity to present this report, which was adopted last December at the11th IPBES plenary session in Namibia after three years of intense collaboration with around 100 international authors.
After Philippe Augé, President of the University of Montpellier, opened the event, the morning session featured two round tables giving the floor to authors of the assessment on Transformative Changes, two authors of the IPBES Nexus report, and interdisciplinary researchers from Montpellier.
Roundtable discussion: "Transformative change is necessary, urgent, and difficult, but possible: what strategies?"
The strategies for transformative change developed in the evaluation were presented, in conjunction with the Nexus assessment, highlighting the importance of implementing solutions tailored to their specific contexts, evaluating them, and readjusting them.
Speakers:
- Sebastian Villasante, coordinating author of Chapter 2, researcher in applied economics at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain);
- Stephen Woroniecki, author and fellow contributor to Chapter 3, Head of Research at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (United Kingdom);
- Sandra Luque, lead author of Chapter 1 of the Nexus assessment, senior research director at INRAE, within the TETIS joint research unit in Montpellier;
- Florence Palpacuer, professor and researcher in management at MOMA, MRM, University of Montpellier;
- Yves Zinngrebe, coordinating author of Chapter 5, deputy head of the Department of Conservation Ecology and Socio-Ecological Systems, and head of the Working Group on Biodiversity Governance and Nature Conservation at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ (Germany).
Roundtable: "Fostering transformative change: roles for everyone"
Avenues for transformation towards sustainable food systems, the role of research in transformative change, and knowledge gaps identified during the drafting of the report were presented. The notion of the scale of application of transformative change was mentioned, as well as the importance of synergies between different actors in society.
Speakers:
- Timothée Fouqueray, author and fellow of Chapter 2, Doctor of Ecology, IODE, postdoctoral researcher at CNRS (Rennes);
- Fabrice Declerck, coordinating author of Chapter 5.3 of the Nexus assessment, researcher on food systems, CGIAR (Montpellier);
- Gabriela Demarchi, researcher in environmental economics, MoISA, CIRAD (Montpellier);
- Niki Frantzeskaki, coordinating author of Chapter 4, full professor of urban governance at Utrecht University (Netherlands);
- Coline Léandre, Project Manager for the French Committee for IPBES at the Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (Montpellier).
A presentation on the different ways of participating in the various activities conducted by IPBES was given by Amarys Preuss, IPBES Stakeholder Engagement Officer. This was followed by Stephen Woroniecki's feedback on his participation as a fellow author, i.e., a young researcher.
The words of François Pierrot, Vice President of International Relations at the University of Montpellier, concluded the morning, which was illustrated several times by Guillaume Monnain's sketches, summarizing the discussions and the event.
