Humanity is on a deeply unsustainable trajectory. We are exceeding planetary boundaries and unlikely to meet many international sustainable development goals and global environmental targets. Until recently, there was no broadly accepted framework of interventions that could ignite the transformations needed to achieve these desired targets and goals. As a component of the IPBES Global Assessment, we conducted an iterative expert deliberation process with an extensive review of scenarios and pathways to sustainability, including the broader literature on indirect drivers, social change and sustainability transformation. We asked, what are the most important elements of pathways to sustainability? Applying a social–ecological systems lens, we identified eight priority points for intervention (leverage points) and five overarching strategic actions and priority interventions (levers), which appear to be key to societal transformation. The eight leverage points are: (1) Visions of a good life, (2) Total consumption and waste, (3) Latent values of responsibility, (4) Inequalities, (5) Justice and inclusion in conservation, (6) Externalities from trade and other telecouplings, (7) Responsible technology, innovation and investment, and (8) Education and knowledge generation and sharing. The five intertwined levers can be applied across the eight leverage points and more broadly. These include: (A) Incentives and capacity building, (B) Coordination across sectors and jurisdictions, (C) Pre‐emptive action, (D) Adaptive decision‐making and (E) Environmental law and implementation. The levers and leverage points are all non‐substitutable, and each enables others, likely leading to synergistic benefits. Transformative change towards sustainable pathways requires more than a simple scaling‐up of sustainability initiatives—it entails addressing these levers and leverage points to change the fabric of legal, political, economic and other social systems. These levers and leverage points build upon those approved within the Global Assessment's Summary for Policymakers, with the aim of enabling leaders in government, business, civil society and academia to spark transformative changes towards a more just and sustainable world. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Global climate change is an atmospheric commons problem where the basic actors are the states. In democratic nations national policy initiatives depend on the opinion of the electorate. Unless there is a proper popular perception of climate change, it will be difficult to undertake appropriate and timely measures. Previous experimental studies of people's understanding of climate change and of other renewable resource problems have revealed that people misperceive the basic dynamics and that they favour decisions that are systematically biased in the direction of over-utilisation. In the present laboratory experiment, with 251 students, the focus is on understanding why people misperceive and how misperceptions could be avoided. Using a simulator, the subjects are asked to control total global emissions of CO 2 to reach a given target for the atmospheric CO 2 -concentration. Compared to a previous study we find that full information about a simplified system leads to improved performance, particularly among students with a background in mathematics. Subjects perform better in an analogous, however more easily visualisable system, indicating that they have difficulties forming appropriate mental models of the more abstract atmospheric problem. Two information treatments, thought to improve mental models, turn out to have insignificant effects. Finally, information feedback about the development of the CO 2 -concentration helps. According to our findings, current information from the IPCC and the standard media coverage is not effective in helping people to choose policies that are consistent with their own preferences.

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