To address increasingly pressing social–environmental challenges, the transformative strand of sustainability science seeks to move beyond a descriptive-analytical stance in order to explore and contribute to the implementation of radical alternatives to dominant and unsustainable paradigms, norms, and values. However, in many cases, academia is not currently structured to support and reward inter-/trans-disciplinary and transformative endeavors. This paper introduces a theory of change for the Future Earth Pathways Initiative, and similar initiatives, to help leverage the capacity of sustainability scientists to engage in transformative research.

The increasing body of descriptive-analytical knowledge produced by sustainability science over the last two decades has largely failed to trigger the transformation of policies, norms, and behaviors it was aiming to inform. The emergent transformative strand of sustainability science is a proactive alternative approach seeking to play an active role in processes of societal change by developing knowledge about options, solutions, and pathways, and by participating in their implementation. In principle, scientists can enhance their contribution to more sustainable futures by engaging in transformative research. However, a lack of skills and competencies, relatively unmatured transformative methods and concepts, and an institutional landscape still geared toward disciplinary and descriptive-analytical research, still hinders the sustainability science community from engaging more widely in transformative research. In this paper, the Future Earth Pathways Initiative introduces a theory of change (ToC) for increasing the capacity of sustainability scientists to engage in this type of research. This ToC ultimately aims to build a growing community of practitioners engaged in transformative research, to advance concepts, methods, and paradigms to foster ‘fit-for-purpose transformative research’, and to shape institutions to nurture transformative research-friendly contexts.

What would a theory of change for leveraging the transformative capacity of sustainability science look like?

We summarize what we assess as the past year's most important findings within climate change research: limits to adaptation, vulnerability hotspots, new threats coming from the climate–health nexus, climate (im)mobility and security, sustainable practices for land use and finance, losses and damages, inclusive societal climate decisions and ways to overcome structural barriers to accelerate mitigation and limit global warming to below 2°C.

We synthesize 10 topics within climate research where there have been significant advances or emerging scientific consensus since January 2021. The selection of these insights was based on input from an international open call with broad disciplinary scope. Findings concern: (1) new aspects of soft and hard limits to adaptation; (2) the emergence of regional vulnerability hotspots from climate impacts and human vulnerability; (3) new threats on the climate–health horizon – some involving plants and animals; (4) climate (im)mobility and the need for anticipatory action; (5) security and climate; (6) sustainable land management as a prerequisite to land-based solutions; (7) sustainable finance practices in the private sector and the need for political guidance; (8) the urgent planetary imperative for addressing losses and damages; (9) inclusive societal choices for climate-resilient development and (10) how to overcome barriers to accelerate mitigation and limit global warming to below 2°C.

Science has evidence on barriers to mitigation and how to overcome them to avoid limits to adaptation across multiple fields.