The first Wyss Academy Symposium provided us with many insights that will be valuable to the work of our organization. Here is an overview of the findings obtained during our discussions during the Parallel Sessions – and what we learned to help us improve the way we conduct future events of this kind. 

Three sessions aimed to enhance our systems understanding in the areas relevant to our work. Echoing across all sessions was the necessity to include a wide diversity of actors in the co-creation of solutions. These were the findings of each session.

1. Embracing complexity towards transformative change

This session brought together various approaches and experiences in how complex challenges can be addressed in practice.

Findings:

1. In order to effect transformative change, people who are involved in, or affected by, a challenge must be integrated into the process of addressing it.

2. Complex topics require a diversity of perspectives in order to be addressed effectively.

3.  Scientific models for understanding complex challenges should be informed by real-world examples where possible.

2. Identifying and amplifying co-benefits between nature stewardship and human wellbeing

This session drew on the diverse perspectives of its participants to explore a key concern of the Wyss Academy for Nature: How can we find solutions to our environmental challenges that are based on mutual benefits, both for nature and for the people involved?

Findings:

1. Participants confirmed that approaches with mutual benefits to nature and to human wellbeing are key to truly sustainable development.

2. Science must be carried out in a way that is linked more closely to the people it is trying to serve.

3. Ideally, tools to identify co-benefits between nature stewardship and human wellbeing should be improved.

4. Due to the limited time available, existing tools must be used, but in a manner that takes their limitations into account.

5.  We need more information on how to amplify and accelerate positive tipping points.

3. Living labs as catalysts for pathways to transformative change

This session looked at how to best make use of living labs: These offer a way to co-develop a systemic understanding of social and environmental challenges. They can also be used to, collectively, produce innovations and test them in real-world solutions, to evaluate the outcomes, and to apply them to the areas of science, policy and practice. 

Findings: 

1. Since nothing in a complex system is perfect, we need to test, check and learn from various approaches in order to achieve positive results.

2.   Imbalances in power between actors should be addressed by creating safe spaces for dialogue, and an inclusive process that embraces diversity.

3.  We need to find the courage to ask people that we engage uncomfortable questions.

4.  Goals and visions for transformation must be ambitious.

Session 1: Embracing complexity towards transformative change

The growing complexity of our world’s coupled socio-ecological systems (SES) pose a great challenge for the urgently needed transformative change towards sustainability. Not only is it impossible to fully understand the complexity of these dynamic, nested, and interdependent systems, but our understanding will also change with the vantage points we chose, the questions we ask, and the interests we pursue.  If knowledge is key to navigating system transformations towards human wellbeing and ecosystem integrity, we need to work with knowledge that is inherently incomplete, fragmented, and even disputed. 

There have been huge advances to tackle the complexity of SES in system thinking, complex system theory, dynamic system modelling and participatory approaches in the last decades. This has, however, only trickled down to a limited degree to practical real-life approaches, methodologies and tools on how to deal with the complexity of SES.

This session aimed at bringing together different approaches and experiences on how complexity can practically be addressed and used for knowledge diplomacy and decision making. Using this as inspiration, we wanted to jointly work towards a toolbox and principles for its use that will allow us to balance the need of capturing key features of complexity with the necessity of simplifying and sharing knowledge for stakeholder negotiations and decision-making. 

Session 2: Identifying and amplifying co-benefits between nature stewardship and human well-being

Since the industrial revolution, the growth in human population and affluence have been associated with increasing natural resource exploitation and environmental degradation. In the context of developing countries, an “environmental paradox” is often observed, whereby human well-being increases at the expense of environmental quality. In parallel, many countries endowed with abundant natural resources have not shown the social and economic performance expected, due to a highly unequal exploitation of these resources by elites in an increasingly globalized world: a phenomenon also known as the 'resource curse'. 

Any vision for a more sustainable future should therefore tackle the question of whether and how efforts to improve human well-being can be decoupled from negative environmental impacts. Finding lasting approaches through which nature can be nurtured and even restored, while improving human well-being where it is most needed, is key for sustainable development. 

Is human development inevitably eroding nature, or could this vicious circle be turned into a virtuous one? While the trade-offs are well known, the goal of this session is to assess the scientific evidence supporting the existence of co-benefits between nature stewardship and human well-being. Building upon the learnings from concrete examples, the session aimed to go beyond those, in order to explore possible upscaling dilemmas, as well as positive tipping points that could speed up the deployment of sustainable practices and nature stewardship approaches at larger scales. 

Session 3: Living labs as catalysts for pathways to transformative change

Scientists and activists concerned with implementing the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement, and the Biodiversity Convention have pointed to the urgent need to explore pathways for the transformation of the current human-environmental systems, including food, energy, economy or urban areas. Due to the complex, systemic and contested nature of the relevant problems, we need entirely new forms of solutions and new approaches to develop these.  

In the past years, various approaches have emerged - including transformation labs, social innovation labs or living labs – which have tried to break down the silos of research, policy and practice. Despite considerable differences, they have in common the use of transdisciplinary approaches to co-design a systemic understanding of socio-ecological challenges, to co-produce innovations and test them in real-word situations, and to co-evaluate the outcomes for learning and transfer to science, policy, and practice.  

This session brought together practitioners and scientists to share their insights on these approaches, their applicability, and their strengths and shortcomings. They also highlighted how they managed to bring together actors from different backgrounds and cultures, with different power and world views, to jointly develop a vision of a desirable, sustainable and just future.