Scientists, including those working with the Earth Commission, are calling for a fundamental rethink of how the world imagines its future, arguing that today's dominant climate and biodiversity models are too narrow to deal with the scale and complexity of the crises ahead.
In a new paper published in One Earth , researchers warn that many widely used global scenarios are built on the same assumptions that helped create the world's current problems. By relying on existing economic systems, governance structures, and social norms, these models tend to focus on incremental change rather than the deeper, sweeping transformations needed to achieve a safe and just future.
"Right now, many of our global scenarios are effectively asking how to fix the future without really changing the present," Commissioner and lead author Professor Laura Pereira from the Global Change Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and the Stockholm Resilience Centre says. "If we want pathways that work, we need tools that can explore different economic models, different power structures, and different relationships between people and nature, not just different technologies."
Pereira adds that this matters because the world is not facing a single crisis, but several at once: climate change, biodiversity loss, widening inequality and more. Yet current models rarely capture how these challenges interact or how shifts in power, institutions, and values could reshape possible futures.
Pereira is one of 23 commissioners on the Earth Commission, four of whom are from Africa. Convened by Future Earth , the world's largest network of sustainability researchers, the Commission brings together an international team of natural and social scientists to identify the planet's critical thresholds – to ensure there is clean air and water, biodiversity, and a stable climate in which all life can thrive.
Scientists use models to understand how the planet works in a simplified way. Different models specialise in different things: they can pull together data and theories to simulate how the atmosphere, oceans, ecosystems, and economies interact over time and how they might respond to changes such as rising emissions, land-use shifts, or new policies. The most widely used models for decision-making include Integrated Assessment Models, but these have acknowledged constraints that can be improved through better scenarios and more innovative use of diverse models, including those used in economics and conservation. This is a big gap in the African context because we are the only region without an IAM- a gap that has been noted within the Wits-led Future Ecosystems for Africa programme , and which the team hopes to address if their funding is renewed.
The outputs from scenarios and models shape major global assessments like the IPCC and IPBES and negotiations in the UNFCCC and CBD, but the paper argues how many scenarios fail to ask some of the most basic questions: who benefits, who bears the costs, and whose voices are included in shaping the future. These blind spots are particularly stark when it comes to perspectives from the Global South, the authors write.
Instead, they call for a new generation of "integrated transformative scenarios", approaches which bring together climate, biodiversity, and equity goals, and which are co-developed with a much broader range of actors, including Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
To get there, the paper lays out a research agenda. Among its proposals is a Global South–led "scenarios secretariat," new types of models designed from the ground up to handle complexity and uncertainty, and stronger links between different fields of research, and alternative economic thinking.
Some early examples already point in this direction, including nature-centred scenarios, post-growth economic models, and justice-focused initiatives such as the Justice Model Intercomparison Project and the work undertaken by the Transformations Pathways workstream in the Earth Commission. Together, they begin to sketch out futures that are not only environmentally sustainable, but also more equitable.
"We find there's a real need to move beyond business-as-usual modelling," says Albert Norström, the Commission's science director, "and start co-creating futures that reflect the diversity of societies, knowledge, and values around the world."
About the Earth Commission
The Earth Commission assesses and synthesizes the latest science to define the boundaries for a safe and just planet. Convened by Future Earth, the world's largest network of sustainability scientists, the Commission unites an international team of natural and social researchers to identify critical planetary thresholds – to ensure there is clean air and water, biodiversity, and a stable climate in which all life can thrive. This work informs the development of science-based targets for cities and business, and guides the pivotal transformations needed to achieve a safe and just world. Learn more at www.earthcommission.org .
About Wits University
The University of the Witwatersrand (aka Wits University) is renowned for its academic and research excellence, its commitment to social justice, and the advancement of the public good, for over 100 years. It is one of the leading institutions on the African continent that produces world-class research that is locally relevant and globally competitive.
Wits is a global leader in botany, zoology, and animal, plant and environmental sciences. It is committed to solving global challenges (including climate change) from its vantage point in the global south. Wits' research output has increased by over 45% in the last four years with more than 85% of its research published in international journals.
Wits offers a free space for the exchange of ideas and a vibrant intellectual community that fosters debate and knowledge transfer both within and beyond its lecture halls.
