Transformative capacities for navigating system change: a framework for sustainability research and practice

In the face of climate change and other ecological pressures, there is urgent need to transform human systems and their society-nature relationships. However, there is a gap between transformative ambitions and our ability to enable transformative change. The relationship between sustainability transformations in practice and the transformative capacities that enable them is complex and indirect, requiring integrative frameworks to clarify the relationships between what transformations entail and the capacities needed to enable them. We develop the integrative transformative capacities framework (TCF) to conceptualize how sustainability transformations relate to the capacities to realize them in terms of the focal system and the strategies needed to bring about a desired change. We illustrate this framework, proposing key features of sustainability transformations, then identifying strategies for change associated with each feature and the capacities required to implement each strategy. We conclude by discussing some challenges of theorizing, identifying, and building transformative capacities and how the TCF addresses these challenges. This framework can help researchers be explicit about their assumptions and decisions about systems change, strategies to influence change, and the capacities to enable different actors to meaningfully contribute to change.