In January 2023, when we celebrated the fifth anniversary of Nature Sustainability¹, we promised our readers the return of expert panels — a unique convening effort that has accompanied the journal since it was launched. After successfully completing four different expert panels, we had to pause, mainly to recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic that substantially limited our ability to engage proactively with the community. We are finally back and excited to announce our fifth expert panel. The groundwork to find a new partner started early in 2023. Editors held conversations with a group of researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia, about the possibility of joining efforts to convene a panel of experts. The conversations matured into a proposal and then translated into an action plan that is now finalized as the ‘CSIRO–Nature Sustainability International Expert Panel on Overcoming Resistance to enable Sustainability Transformation’. This convening effort counts on 3 co-chairs and 20 experts from a variety of institutions spanning the Americas, Europe, Africa and Australia to work together on a topic of core interest to Nature Sustainability — resistance to change.

Credit: Alex Whitworth/Springer Nature

The debate about sustainability transformations has intensified over the past few years. Research projects, calls for funding, academic programmes, consulting work, policy and business developments, non-governmental organization advocacy efforts and citizen science initiatives are all increasingly focusing on ‘sustainability transformations’ and ‘sustainability transitions’. Experts of different backgrounds interested in the human–nature interface, who are mindful that societies can only thrive if the natural world thrives, have been focusing on finding drivers of change and the critical innovations for the transition to a more sustainable future. Much has been discussed, taught, researched and published about the need to transform to set the world on a more sustainable development path, but frustration is mounting at the slow pace of actual change on the ground. In April, the President of the United Nations general assembly made it clear, for example, that the pace of energy transformations is much too slow², while in December 2023, at COP28, countries agreed to start the transition away from fossil fuels³, leaving many scientists stunned — according to scientific evidence, this transition should already be halfway through as of now.

So why is the pace of change so slow, and how can change be accelerated? These are the focal points of the CSIRO–Nature Sustainability expert panel. By adopting a socio-techno-ecological systems lens, the panellists will assess and synthesize the available evidence of the recurring patterns of behaviour and the underlying root causes that lead to resistance to sustainability transitions and how they manifest in different systems and geographical settings. They understand ‘resistance’ as the dynamic phenomenon emerging from the interactions between strategizing actors and specific forces within the incumbent system. They understand ‘system’ as the configuration of value-chain actors and their strategies, technologies, markets, policymaking processes, infrastructure, social networks, institutions, norms, values and natural resources that have co-evolved over decades.

The panel experts will assess the resistance phenomenon through ten case studies across three systems — electricity, agri-food and automotive — and different countries, including South Africa, Brazil, the USA, Australia, Japan and those in Europe. The above systems are each at a different phase of the transition life cycle with different levels of resistance in the incumbent system. The aim is ultimately to understand what leverage points can be targeted in a system to overcome resistance and accelerate the sustainability transition. Panellists will develop tangible policy, practice and research recommendations to tackle regime resistance and facilitate actual transformations.

Some of the panel’s preliminary findings will be presented at the forthcoming National Sustainability Society’s inaugural conference in Seattle, USA, in a session moderated by Nature Sustainability. The final report is expected to be released in early 2025, and we will highlight its key messages and recommendations in Nature Sustainability and hope that it will be the starting point for new thinking and collaborations to accelerate action towards sustainable development.

Resistance to change is understandable, even more so when the change in question is complex and substantial, and must happen against the backdrop of deep uncertainty and challenging economic and geopolitical times. But there is no time left to protect the world from climate and biodiversity disasters and from the consequences of unacceptable socio-economic disparities. According to the best available scientific evidence, such problems will have far more damaging effects on societies than wars and pandemics. Overcoming resistance to change is therefore critical to ensure a thriving and sustainable future for generations to come.