Imagination, Connectedness, and Experimentation: Triggering and Accelerating Sustainability Transformations

Societies around the globe are faced with an urgent and intensifying challenge: how do we rapidly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels while simultaneously preparing communities to thrive amidst escalating impacts of climate change like floods, fires and extreme heat?  The transformative potential of the many climate actions that have already been implemented is limited by siloed approaches that often fail to explicitly design for and quantify synergies with other pressing priorities.  Two critical ingredients are required to generate breakthroughs: evidence-based strategies that amplify and mobilize both social and technical climate change innovations; and knowledge of and experience with transformative climate change interventions that deliver robust co-benefits for other sustainability priorities, while limiting tradeoffs.  This talk will explore empirical evidence for imaginative, transdisciplinary approaches to sustainability experimentation that uncover the deeper leverage points of change, and the crucial relationships among diverse stakeholders.  Ultimately the goal is to define an ambitious scope of work that responds directly to the urgency of intersecting crises, while meaningfully engaging with emerging understandings of how individual and collective behaviour actually shift.