Plurality in transformative change: three pathways toward nature-positive Europe(s)

In this paper, we focus on transformative pathways as an approach to the desired future. Pathways generally outline potential routes of interventions and actions from the present to desired futures, which can inform governance strategies right now (Alexandra et al., 2023; Muiderman et al., 2022). They can cover a range of different paths, from business-as-usual to incremental and transformative change (Haasnoot et al., 2024). Transformative pathways specifically focus on achieving a desired, transformed future outcomes. Embracing plurality in their creation is valuable, as it acknowledges and legitimizes the varied realities of different actors (Mangnus et al., 2021; Raymond et al., 2023) and supports the development of plural futures that reflect the existence of a wide array of possible futures (Colloff et al., 2021; Rutting et al., 2022). 

In this paper, we aim to deepen the understanding of transformative pathways and enhance methods for co-creating them. By enhancing the methods used in their creation, we aim to support future endeavours in pathway creation. We start by conceptualising transformative pathways in Section Two and outlining the methods used in this paper in Section Three. We continue by presenting three co-created transformative pathways for a nature-positive Europe, which we analyse for their patterns of change and plurality of perspectives on transformative change. The three transformative pathways were co-created in a workshop held in 2024 as part of the Horizon Europe project BIONEXT. These pathways build on three desirable nature-positive visions for Europe in 2050 developed in a previous workshop, which provided the desired endpoint to inspire the pathways (Lazurko et al., in review). In the final section, we discuss and critically reflect on the methods used to create and analyse the transformative pathways.

Mara de Pater and Aniek Hebinck conceived the ideas and designed the methodology. Mara de Pater led the writing of the manuscript. Mara de Pater, Aniek Hebinck, Symke Nieboer, Anita Lazurko, and Elizabeth Díaz-General collected and analyzed the data. Robbert Biesbroek, Laura Pereira, Samia Baadj, Anna Chilton, Seweryn Krupnik, Richard Kock, Klemetti Näkkäläjärvi, Mathijs Rozemuller, Eirini Sakellari were participants in the co-creation process. All coauthors contributed insights and text to the manuscript and revised and approved the final version.

An output of the BIONEXT project, co-funded by the European Union and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) - project ID 10039588. Email bionext.project@syke.fi