For conservation professional Candeze Mongaya from the Philippines, a three-month MPhil in Conservation Leadership placement with the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) offered a rare chance to step inside one of the world’s leading boundary organizations and ask: what does transformative change look like from within?
Her placement came at a pivotal time. UNEP-WCMC was drafting its 2026-2029 strategy with transformation at its core while supporting countries to deliver the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF). This gave her a unique vantage point to see how global ambitions collide with institutional realities.
“The world faces interconnected crises that cannot be solved by incremental fixes. Transformative change means shifting systems, worldviews, and relationships, not just making small, incremental improvements,” Candeze reflected, drawing on insights from the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment.
An embedded perspective
Candeze worked with the Nature-Based Solutions team while engaging with colleagues in the Nature Economy, Policy, and other impact areas. She combined interviews, document reviews, and strategy workshop observations. This approach showed her how ideas of transformation moved from strategy into everyday practice.
Her research revealed diverse interpretations. For some, transformation meant improving technical tools. For others, it meant rethinking conservation altogether, closer to the IPBES vision of deep structural shifts in economies, governance, and values.
The human side of change
One of her most distinctive findings was the role of emotions. Feelings of hope, uncertainty, and fatigue shaped how staff engaged with transformation. “This human dimension is often overlooked, but it is central. Change happens through people, their motivations, and their relationships,” she reflected.
In one strategy workshop, the discussion around “what transformation really means” became a turning point. Some colleagues defined it as improving technical systems, while others argued for rethinking entire conservation approaches. That debate crystallised for Candeze that transformation is not a single definition, but a live and sometimes contested conversation inside institutions.
Lessons for leadership
Candeze’s study showed that conservation leadership is as much about navigating institutional dynamics as shaping science or policy. It involves holding space for ambiguity, balancing competing priorities, and aligning bold visions with operational realities.
She highlighted three lessons for institutions seeking to rise to the scale of the biodiversity crisis:
Clarity on what “transformative change” means in practice.
Distributed leadership that empowers staff at all levels.
Partnerships that extend beyond conservation networks, especially with communities on the frontlines of biodiversity loss.
These lessons echo the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment, which emphasizes the need for systemic shifts and inclusive visions of the future.
Looking ahead
For Candeze, the placement reinforced the importance of bridging scales: connecting the lived realities of coastal communities in the Philippines with the institutional challenges of global conservation organizations. “Whether in a fishing village or a UN centre in Cambridge, real change comes from relationships, from building trust and listening deeply. That is how systems start to shift.”
Her perspective builds on years of policy and advocacy work with coastal communities, local and national governments in the Philippines, and broader conservation initiatives across Asia and the Pacific. This regional grounding made her especially alert to the ways global biodiversity frameworks are interpreted and applied on the ground.
Candeze concluded her placement with both caution and optimism. Structural barriers continue to shape the organisation’s work, yet she also saw leadership signalling openness, staff creating spaces for dialogue, and colleagues willing to test new framings. In her view, these are not final answers but important first steps toward aligning institutional practice with the scale of global biodiversity goals. Her reflections were also shared with UNEP-WCMC’s senior leadership team as part of the strategy process, where they helped frame discussions about priorities, barriers, and opportunities. By highlighting both organisational strengths and persistent challenges, her placement offered practical recommendations on issues such as pluralism, accountability, and collaboration across teams. These inputs gave leadership a platform to consider concrete shifts as the Centre positions itself for the 2026–2029 strategy.
Candeze Mongaya is a Masters in Conservation Leadership student from the Philippines, with nearly a decade of experience advancing community-led fisheries management, area-based conservation, and global biodiversity goals under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.