Around one million species of animals and plants are threatened with extinction. It is increasingly clear that this tragedy can only be avoided through transformative change (IPBES, 2019). This chapter aims to understand why the current state of biodiversity is so fragile, despite over half a century of global conservation efforts, and develop insights for more effective ways forward. We argue that past efforts have failed in part because they are based on an “ill-fit for purpose” problem analysis, and that reconfiguring problem conceptions shows promising directions for identifying novel strategies for triggering transformative change.

The Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) (the Post-2020 Framework) is expected to embody transformative change through the adoption of the framework’s “Theory of Change” (CBD, 2020). Its implementation must recognize that the global biodiversity governance architecture needs to transform to lead the required personal and social transformations, including shifts in values, beliefs and patterns of social behaviors (Chaffin et al., 2016), necessary to successfully tackle biodiversity loss. Against this backdrop, the overarching goal of this chapter is to analyze what needs to be transformed in global biodiversity governance, including institutional structures that shape values, beliefs and behavioral change. The chapter examines obstacles and opportunities for transformation, with the indirect objective of informing implementation of the Post-2020 Framework; at the time of writing, the CBD is expected to adopt the Post-2020 GBF in 2022.

While there are increasing calls for transformative change and transformative governance, what this means in the context of addressing biodiversity loss remains debated. The aim of this edited volume Transforming Biodiversity Governance is to open up this debate and identify ways forward in the context of the implementation of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). To become transformative, biodiversity governance needs to be transformed: yet how and by whom? These questions are urgent, given the fact that around one million species are threatened with extinction (Díaz et al., 2019), despite over half a century of global efforts to avoid this tragedy.

This book is written at a vital time for biodiversity around the world. Biodiversity is threatened more than ever before in human history, and nature and its vital contributions to people are deteriorating worldwide, as highlighted by various recent reports (CBD, 2020a; EEA, 2019; IPBES, 2019; WWF, 2020). This is not only a problem for these ecosystems and their inhabitants, but also for humans, since we depend on biodiversity for many vital processes such as food production and provision of natural resources. These risks of biodiversity loss are increasingly recognized among policymakers, academics and society at large (IPBES, 2019; WEF, 2021).