Putting transformative collaboration into practice: Reflections from the World Biodiversity Forum 2026

by Mirjam Steiger and Sierra Deutsch

How can different knowledge systems be brought into conversation on equal footing when working towards transformative change? And how can principles for more relational and inclusive collaboration be translated into concrete research practices?

At the World Biodiversity Forum (WBF) 2026 in Davos, the FIRI project hosted the workshop “Rethinking Human-Natures: Holding Indigenous Peoples’, practitioners’, and university researchers’ knowledges in parity for transdisciplinary transformative change.” Building on experiences from collaboration among our three knowledge teams (Indigenous stewardship specialists, Swiss nature conservation practitioners, and university researchers) the workshop invited participants to experiment with approaches developed and adapted throughout the FIRI project and apply them to their own projects and challenges.

Working towards desired futures with the 3H-Framework

Participants formed three groups around concrete projects or challenges brought into the workshop by the participants themselves. One group explored a project addressing nature conservation and social and environmental inequalities in South Africa, including questions around access to green spaces, environmental education, and nature protection. A second group discussed the incorporation of ayahuasca ceremonies into Western medicine. Their conversation raised broader questions around extractive research, the Westernization of Indigenous and local knowledge, recognition of traditional knowledge, and dominant understandings of medicine and mental health. The third group focused on how funding structures for biodiversity and environmental change research could be transformed, questioning, among other things, short funding cycles, disciplinary boundaries, and whose knowledge and interests research funding ultimately serves.

To explore these cases, participants first worked with the Three Horizons Framework (3H) and Two-Eyed Seeing. As described in our previous blog post (see here), the 3H-Framework helps groups articulate a desired future, identify aspects of the present that hinder or support that future, and explore innovations that could enable the transition. Working through the five steps gave the groups a structured way to progressively unpack their cases. Starting from the futures they wanted to see, they discussed current barriers, existing “pockets” of the desired future, innovations that could help these alternatives expand, and elements of the present worth carrying forward.

Building on their envisioned futures, participants then drew on Two-Eyed Seeing to consider how they would recognize whether these futures were actually materializing. Within each of the 3 projects, they were then asked to divide themselves according to knowledge perspectives (e.g. social science, natural science, practitioner, government). They were then invited to ask: How will we know that we have reached the future we identified? What would the indicators be from your knowledge perspective, and how could their presence be assessed? In the next step, they reconvened with the others working on their project and collated their indicators and assessment methods. This encouraged participants to consider multiple ways of knowing and assessing change rather than assuming a single understanding of what progress or success should look like. For example, in the South African project, indicators included “same species in both affluent and poorer areas green spaces” and “more democratic decision-making and citizen involvement in protection.”

From PPMs to possibilities

In the second part of the workshop, we introduced participants to an updated version of the Protocols, Practices, and Methods (PPMs) developed through the FIRI project (learn more about the development of the PPMs). In short, they bring together guiding principles (protocols), what we do (practices), and how we do it (methods) to support more justice-oriented relational and inclusive transformative collaboration.

We wanted participants to experiment with applying our PPMs to the projects they had just explored. For this purpose, each group selected a practice that seemed particularly important, urgent, or interesting for its case, for example, co-developing research questions about ILK on ayahuasca use in western medicine together with indigenous and communities practicing ayahuasca rituals. Participants then considered the methods associated with this practice and positioned them on a possible–important matrix. One axis asked how important a method would be for their project, while the other asked how possible or feasible it would be to implement in their particular context.

This exercise made visible that most methods were considered important to highly important. This prompted us to change the wording on the matrix to better reflect importance and we were also inspired to emphasize that nothing is truly impossible when people come together to co-producing solutions (Fig 1).

Figure 1. Original possible-important matrix (left) and adapted matrix based on workshop feedback (right).

Even though all groups would have needed more time and practice to get familiar with the many practices and methods, thinking and discussing concrete examples through this matrix proved as a useful tool and starting point for moving from broad principles towards concrete choices of methods that can be applied in research projects. It encouraged groups not only to ask “What would we ideally like to do differently?” but also “What could we realistically change, what might require more effort, and what conditions or power shifts would need to change to make important practices possible?”.

Learning through exchange

Participant reflections at the end of the workshop highlighted both the potential and the challenges of this process. Several participants noted that they would have needed more time to become familiar with the PPMs and to fully explore how the different practices and methods could be applied in their own contexts. Applying such approaches meaningfully takes time: becoming familiar with them, adapting them to a particular project, and questioning established ways of working requires effort and time allocated within projects.

At the same time, participants particularly appreciated working with concrete examples from their own projects and learning through discussions with people bringing different perspectives and experiences. The combination of the Three Horizons Framework, Two-Eyed Seeing, and the PPMs created space to examine projects from multiple knowledge perspectives while connecting visions of transformative change with concrete research practices. Starting with the hands-on exploration of participants’ own projects through the Three Horizons Framework and Two-Eyed Seeing before moving towards the selection of concrete practices and methods proved a useful way to gradually translate broader visions into practical steps.

The workshop also reminded us that applying methods from our PPMs in our own workshops shape the relationships and atmosphere through which knowledge is exchanged. Practices used during the workshop itself, including opening and closing with a song or presencing exercise and creating space for everyone to speak through a talking-stick approach, demonstrated how seemingly simple changes to how we meet and exchange knowledge can alter the quality of interaction.

The workshop therefore served a dual purpose: participants experimented with approaches they could potentially adapt to their own work, while their experiences also helped us test and reflect on the updated PPMs. Most importantly, working directly with participants’ projects created a space for mutual knowledge exchange—drawing together the experiences developed through FIRI with the diverse knowledge, questions, and challenges participants brought into the room.