Eco-Social Contracts for Sustainable and Just Futures

Patrick Huntjens is Professor of Social Innovation and Sustainability Transitions at Inholland University of Applied Sciences and member of the Global Research and Action Network for a New Eco-Social Contract (GRAN-ESC). An award-winning scholar and practitioner, he received the 2022 Nautilus Book Award (Gold Medal) for Towards a Natural Social Contract and was named Professor of the Year in the Netherlands (2021). With over 25 years of global experience across academia, policy, and practice, Patrick focuses on eco-social contracts, regenerative and care-based economies, sustainability governance, and transformative change, with a strong commitment to social and environmental justice. He is a lead author for IPBES, whose globally recognized work received the 2022 Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity and the 2024 Blue Planet Prize. Patrick has also served as a lead mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian water conflict and advised institutions including the World Bank, United Nations, and European Union. Najma Mohamed leads UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre’s work on nature-based solutions and is a Senior Atlantic Fellow in Social and Economic Equity and member of the Africa Europe Foundation’s Women Leaders Network. Her work focuses on ideas and solutions that address climate change, fight inequality and restore nature to achieve systemic change. She has over two decades of experience translating knowledge into practice through research, advocacy, engagement and influence strategies in international development. From her early work on environmental justice in post-apartheid South Africa, she has maintained her long-standing interest working on nature, climate and equity, including transformative and inclusive approaches to governance, policy and practice. Katja Hujo is head of the UNRISD Bonn office and leads the Transformative Social Policy Programme. Katja’s academic work focuses on social policy, poverty and inequality, as well as socioeconomic development and the sustainability transition. She studied economics and political science at Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen, Freie Universität Berlin (FUB) and National University of Córdoba, Argentina, and holds a doctoral degree in economics from FUB. At UNRISD, she is lead author and coordinator of the 2022 flagship report Crises of Inequality: Shifting Power for a New Eco-Social Contract and co-editor of Between Fault Lines and Front Lines: Shifting Power in an Unequal World (Bloomsbury June 2022). In partnership with the Green Economy Coalition, she represents UNRISD as co-convenor of the Global Research and Action Network for a New Eco-Social Contract (GRAN-ESC). Manisha Desai is the Executive Director of Center for Changing Systems of Power and the Empowerment Trust Endowed Professor of Global Citizenship at Stony Brook University and part of the Global Network for Research and Action for a new eco-social contract. Her areas of research and teaching include gender and globalization/development, transnational feminisms, global justice, particularly climate justice movements and human rights. She is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Sociologist for Women in Society's 2015 Distinguished Feminist Award and the 2016 Faculty Mentor Award from the Compact for Faculty Diversity in the U.S. She has served in many leadership capacities including as President of Sociologist for Women in Society.