Including a plurality of voices
Getting to the room people representing diverse voices is a significan effort to bring them in, but is not enough. The importance of creating a safe space for different perspective to be expressed and taked into consideration requieres the willigness to to care, care about the presence of others but also their ways of knowing, and the visions the have for their future. This tool helps you to explore how to ensure the transformative process you are steering keeps justice at the core.
What you will achieve with this tool?
Recognize care as a fundamental principle for embedding justice and its dimensions into transformative change interventions.
Get inspired by: Colombia and the Indigenous Territorial Entities
After 30 years of intercultural dialogue, the current Government of Colombia (2022–2026) declared eight new territorial entities, representing more than 7 million hectares and 15% of the Colombian Amazon region. The formalization and establishment of these entities represent a comprehensive acknowledgment of Indigenous communities’ sovereignty, knowledge systems, self-determination, and self-government. This is a compelling implementation of:
Recognition justice, as Indigenous identities and knowledge systems are formally respected.
Procedural justice, since dialogues at each stage involved Indigenous legal representatives.
Distributive justice, as the benefits of caring for life under ancestral parameters now return to these communities.
Despite the Colombian Constitution (1991) establishing the country as a decentralized, multicultural, and pluralistic nation, Indigenous communities historically could not fully decide or govern over their territories. Every incoming government crafts a "National Development Plan", which reflects a crucial epistemic difference from Indigenous governance, where communities design "Life Plans"—frameworks for caring for territory beyond human needs. Understanding how Indigenous communities care for their lands and people led to a structural transformation of Colombia’s political division. The National Geographic Institute has now been ordered to redraw the map to include these eight new territorial entities.
Learn more through Gaia Amazonas, a key NGO with a long-standing relationship with Indigenous communities: El presidente de la República, Gustavo Petro, materializó el pacto constitucional con la formalización de las primeras 8 Entidades Territoriales Indígenas de la Amazonía colombiana – Gaia Amazonas
Explore how to take action
Remember, this is an inspiration guide (not a recipe) to help you decide what will be most transformative for your context. Every context is unique!
With whom and for whom are you transforming?
Which power dynamics might hinder local communities from caring for ecosystems?
How will you sustain a care-centered approach to ensure justice throughout the process, rather than treating it as a final goal?
Being just means taking care. Equity is both a driver and an outcome of positive transformations. Transformative change requires a relational shift in how humans interact with nature, ecosystems, and the environment as a whole. Positive synergies between social well-being and environmental health are essential. This is only possible if justice mechanisms, a change in structures, ensure that transformative change does not come at the expense of any group, community, or sector, now or in the future.
References
D.1.1
Gupta, J., et al. (2024). A just world on a safe planet: A Lancet Planetary Health–Earth Commission report on Earth-system boundaries, translations, and transformations. The Lancet Planetary Health, 8(10), e813–e873. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(24)00172-7
Gaia Amazonas. (2025, December 17). The President of the Republic, Gustavo Petro, materialized the constitutional pact with the formalization of the first 8 Indigenous Territorial Entities of the Colombian Amazon – Gaia Amazonas. https://gaiaamazonas.org/noticias-y-comunicados/entidades-territoriales-indigenas/
O’Brien, K., Garibaldi, L. A., Agrawal, A., Bennett, E., Biggs, R., Rafael, C. C., Carr, E. R., Frantzeskaki, N., Gosnell, H., Gurung, J., Lambertucci, S. A., Leventon, J., Chuan, L., Victoria, R. G., Shannon, L., Villasante, S., Wickson, F., Zinngrebe, Y., & Périanin, L. (2025). IPBES Transformative Change Assessment: Summary for Policymakers. In Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17099400