Transformation studies have been leaning towards the more practical aspects of change processes and have not yet dealt sufficiently with their personal and political dimensions. They are arguably constrained in doing so if they are either overly focussed on systems and how to control them or on individualistic values and behaviours. In this study we show how the actually-occurring societal transformations that people face can be usefully approached through the lenses of dialogical sense-making and critical phenomenology. While distinct, these approaches share a concern with aspects missed when transformation is abstracted and alienated from people’s lives; namely people’s lived experiences during times of change, and the conditions of possibility for these experiences. Dialogical sense-making explores how people create meaning around transformations, through interactions with other people, with different lines of arguments, and as part of broader public discourse. Critical phenomenology engages with subjectivity and lived experience, and with the role of foundational as well as socio-culturally dominant yet contingent structures in shaping our ways of perceiving, experiencing and knowing the world. Through a discussion of insights from these approaches, we show how they offer tools that enable new questions about transformative change as it is experienced and made sense of. Situating analyses of tranformation from within a focus on experience brings us closer to understanding the significance of change processes in people’s lives, and allows for an inquiry into the conditions of experience, including transformative experiences.

Nature-based solutions (NbS) - working with and enhancing nature to address societal challenges - are increasingly being featured in climate change adaptation policy and plans. While there is growing evidence that NbS can reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts in general, there is a lack of understanding on the mechanisms through which this can be achieved, particularly in the Global South. To address this, we analyse 85 nature-based interventions in rural areas across the Global South, and factors mediating their effectiveness, based on a systematic map of peer-reviewed studies encompassing a wide diversity of ecosystems, climate impacts, and intervention types. We develop and apply an analytical framework of people’s social-ecological vulnerability to climate change, in terms of six pathways of vulnerability reduction: social and ecological exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. Most cases (95%) report a reduction in vulnerability, primarily by lowering ecosystem sensitivity to climate impacts (73% of interventions), followed by reducing social sensitivity (52%), reducing ecological exposure (36%), increasing social adaptive capacity (31%), increasing ecological adaptive capacity (19%) and/or reducing social exposure (14%). An analysis of mediating factors shows that social dimensions are equally important as technical factors in NbS to achieving equitable and effective outcomes. Attention to the distinct social and ecological pathways through which vulnerability is reduced helps to harness the multiple benefits of working with nature in a warming world.