Reyes García, VictoriaVillasante Larramendi, Carlos Sebastián2026-03-232026-03-232026Reyes-García, V., Nelson, V., Bonilla-Moheno, M., Hausner, V. H., Leventon, J., Wheeler, H. C., Aksoy, Z., Bates, P., Carino, J., Dabezies, J. M., Frantzeskaki, N., Gordon, E., Gosnell, H., Guibal, C., Gurung, J., Heatta, M. J., Hernandez, Y., Huambachano, M., Ifejika Speranza, C., A Magris, R., … Villasante, S. (2026). Indigenous Peoples and local communities as agents of transformative change for sustainability. Communications earth & environment, 7(1), 102. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-03098-zhttps://hdl.handle.net/10347/46470Achieving just, equitable, and effective sustainability transformations requires diverse social engagement. This paper identifies five key roles played by Indigenous Peoples and local communities as agents of transformative change: embodying sustainable lifeways, resisting harm and defending rights, extending their practices to influence broader systems, and offering foundational models for care-oriented economies and governance. Through illustrative examples, we show how Indigenous Peoples and local communities actively contribute to global transformation. We emphasize the importance of engaging with a wide range of actors in supporting, expanding, and deepening these contributions to realize meaningful, systemic change toward a sustainable and just future.eng© The Author(s) 2026. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync-nd/4.0/.Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/AnthropologySocial sciencesSustainabilityjournal article10.1038/S43247-025-03098-Z2662-4435open access