Transitions to sustainable lifestyles will only happen if people behave, and are incentivised to behave, in ways that are sustainable at all scales. Over the past two decades, behavioral sciences have provided valuable perspectives into how people perceive, decide, and act, uncovering ‘behavioral insights and solutions’ that are now shaping policy-making to lead individuals and systems toward more sustainable choices. While behavioral insights are now an essential part of the policy maker’s toolkit and can be an efficient tool for social change, they also come with challenges. For example, they often place responsibility for unsustainable choices on individuals rather than addressing underlying structural issues. They also carry the risk of being applied in malicious and opaque ways.
In this Pathways Forum webinar, we will interrogate the legitimacy and viability of behavioral solutions for climate change mitigation and transitions to sustainable ways of life in various regions. Our discussion will, firstly, address behavioral insights in understanding and supporting individual climate individual action with a presentation by Kristian Nielsen (Copenhagen Business School). Britt Titus (Airbel Impact Lab) will then discuss the intersection of behavioral insights and climate resilience in the Global South, and how behavioral science can be used not only for individual action but also for systemic change. Lastly, Mariam Chammat (French Interministerial Directorate for public transformation) will reflect on how findings and methods from cognitive and behavioral sciences can be translated into transparent improvements in programs that policy-makers can use for sustainability issues.
Speakers
Kristian S. Nielsen, Assistant Professor, Copenhagen Business School
Britt Titus, Director, International Rescue Committee’s Airbel Impact Lab
Mariam Chammat, Executive advisor at the French behavioral insights unit within the Interministerial Directorate for public transformation (DITP)
Discussion Facilitator
Guillaume Dezecache, Researcher, social and behavioral sciences, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) & UMI SOURCE (UVSQ, IRD, Université Paris Saclay)
The Pathways Forum is a bi-monthly online event where researchers from diverse disciplines who engage, or want to engage, with societal actors in processes of adaptive learning to design, implement, and evaluate pathways to sustainability get a chance to reflect on concepts and theories of change, and discuss the practical implications of sustainability science and transdisciplinarity for research practices. Through this webinar series, the Pathways Initiative aims to develop and support agenda-setting, synthesis and capacity building around pathways for sustainability.
