MSc course: Principles of Environmental Sustainability (P00807) The role of community participation in sustainable development. What shapes public attitudes and engagement?

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Principles of Environmental Sustainability
(P00807) The Principle of Participation in
Environmental Sustainability Dr Claire
Haggett Lecturer in Sociology of Sustainability
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• Why do we need to think about human behaviour and
  the environment?
• Policies and plans are for people not developed
  in the abstract
• Have to understand how they will be received and
  work
• eg transport planning, solar panels on roofs
• Individual or cultural explanations need to
  know which to appeal to
• We are all people move beyond high-handed
  attitudes
• Have to understand environmental attitudes and
  behaviour in the context of peoples lives

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• What shapes public attitudes and engagement?
• People as individuals
• People in contexts
• People making up communities
• Crucial to try and understand how people think
  about sustainable development and how to work
  with people and communities

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Overview for today

• Part 1 Understanding human behaviour
• Public attitudes and behaviour
• Public response to environmental issues
• Break
• Part 2 The role and nature of participation
• The importance of public opinions
• Case study of renewable energy
• Part 3 Break
• Part 4 Discussion
• Part 5 Feedback and key points

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Part 1 Understanding human behaviour

• Overview
• i) Understanding the emergence and extent of
  environmental concern
• ii) Why dont people care more?
• iii) Strategies for change and encouraging
  environmentalism
• iv) Responsibility to care

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• Apollo 17 (Dec 1972)
• Iconic image
• World as a whole
• for the first time
• Able to see problems, disasters, devastation

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i) Understanding environmental concern

• General trend increase
• Influence of specific events/issues
• Widespread in the population
• Concern and knowledge grew during the 1980s and
  1990s
• DEFRA Survey of Public Attitudes to Quality of
  Life and to the Environment

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Explanations for the rise in environmental concern

1. Environmental explanation
2. Interest based explanation
3. Post material values explanation
4. Cultural based explanation

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1. Environmental explanation

• Environmental problems are serious
• and are getting worse?
• Dramatic, catastrophic nature
• Advances in technology, communications
• More able to see evidence of them

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• But does not explain rise and fall in concern
• Hilgartner and Bosch (1988)
• Concern not directly in line with seriousness of
  all problems
• eg seals not slugs
• Concern does not necessarily translate
• into action

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2. Individual interest based explanations

• Rational individuals will not act unless
  personal cost is exceeded by the sum of selected
  incentives
• Material incentives
• Solidarity incentives
• Purposive incentives

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• But overly individualistic and simplistic to
  see participation in environmentalism as just
  about self-interest
• Appeal of collective goods and benefits

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3. Post material explanations

• Ingleharts Post-Material Values Thesis
• The rise of the ecology movement is not simply
  due to the fact that the environment is in a
  worse condition than it used to be. Partly this
  development has taken place because the public
  has become more sensitive to the quality of the
  environment than it was a generation ago
  (Inglehart, 1990372).

• Shift from material to post-material values
• Idea of hierarchy of needs

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• Scarcity hypotheses have money,
• so worry about environment

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So

• Satisfaction of material needs does not
  necessarily lead to the development of
  post-material values
• Lack of material values does not necessarily mean
  no post-material values
• Environmental Justice movement

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• Developing countries Gallup Health of the
  Planet survey of 24 nations
• Citizens in less economically developed nations..
• much more likely to see their local environments
  as degraded
• more likely to see their national environments as
  degraded
• Just as likely to see world environmental
  problems as very serious..
• ... than citizens in the wealthier nations

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4. Cultural based explanation The Risk Society

• Beck environmentalism as a response to the
  risk society
• Broader changes in society
• Technology out of control
• Spread of bads rather than goods
• Hazards produced in the growth of the industrial
  society become predominant (Beck, 199628-29).
• Minimising the consequences of modern society
  becomes more important than the accumulation of
  wealth

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New characteristics of environmental risks

• Risks no longer tied to their place of origin
• Risks can affect everyone risks endanger all
  forms of life on this planet (Beck, 199322).
• Risks are felt across space
• Risks are felt across time atomic accidents..
  affect even those not yet alive at the time
  (Beck, 199322)

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Poverty, justice and sustainable development

• Minimising the consequences of modern society
  becomes more important than the accumulation of
  wealth
• Risks are globalised
• But - risks are felt differently by different
  people
• The rich may be able to buy themselves a certain
  amount of freedom from risk
• Housing, nutrition and occupation
• Invariably the poor who live in
• polluted areas, face the possibilities of
• contaminated food, and the prospects
• of hazardous jobs and working conditions

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Impacts of environmental risks

• Rich countries produce vast bulk of past and
  current GHGs
• Yet those to suffer most from climate change
  will be in the developing world
• fewer resources for coping with storms, with
  floods, with droughts, with disease outbreaks,
  and with disruptions to food and water supplies
• Exporting of risk pollution and chemicals
  relaxed environmental regulations for investment

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• Environmentalism as a response to huge
  environmental problems and inequalities
• As part of a cultural shift
• Societal transition goods and wealth to
  pollution and bads

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ii) Why dont we care more?

• Catastrophic consequences
• International impacts and in the UK
• Media coverage
• Fourth Assessment Intergovernmental Panel on
  Climate Change
• Report on understanding of the human and natural
  drivers of climate change, climate processes and
  attribution, and estimates of projected future
  climate change.
• Conclusions
• Climate change is happening
• It is caused by human impacts
• The effects will last for centuries to come

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Why dont we care more?

• Issues often characterised by
• Being invisible
• Being temporally distant
• Being spatially distant
• Being science based
• Lack of direct experience (mediated information)
• Responsibility cannot unite against a common
  enemy
• Impacts incremental
• No definite deadline
• Huge range of causes and actions one persons
  contribution infinitesimal
• Environmental bads can be social and economic
  goods eg cheap flights
• Example from India The Peoples Car

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Practicalities

• Time consuming public transport
• Costs higher at the point of consumption new
  boiler
• Yucky green nappies
• Lack of opportunities

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Public deficit model

• If only people knew better
• But people are not necessarily stupid, ignorant,
  or irrational
• They do not necessarily lack information
• More reports will not necessarily correlate with
  increased environmentalism
• Environmental attitudes and behaviour have to be
  understood in context

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iii) Strategies for change

• General information provision
• Reducing opportunities for ungreen behaviour
• Sticks
• Carrots
• Inciting fear
• Small, incremental, tangible change

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1. General information provision

• Most frequent but not most effective providing
  general information, and providing information
  about consequences
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vhCJotacAmo4

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2) Reducing opportunities

• Reducing opportunities for un-green behaviour
• 47 of C02 emissions from homes
• Climate Change Bill
• Phasing out stand-by buttons
• Energy saving light bulbs
• Easier decision making or removing
• peoples choice?

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3) Encouraging environmentalism sticks

• Punishments
• Regulation
• Polluters pays
• Not just pollution
• Pay-as-you-throw
• Road pricing
• Low Emission Zone 200 charge for lorries in
  London
• Sledgehammer approach
• Would individuals choose to do this without
  (large) financial penalties?
• Is the Govt right to think of the greater good
  (air quality, illness and death) and force
  drivers to do this?
• Doesnt encourage support for specific or wider
  incentives

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4) Encouraging environmentalism carrots

• Rewarding or making easier green behaviour
• Free home insulation
• Grants for solar panels
• Reduced council tax for energy efficient homes
• HIPs
• Car share schemes
• Personal, social, community rewards

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5) Inciting fear

• Inducing regret arousing fear
• Least effective
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vQD2WTK94c1Ufeature
  related

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• 6) Small, incremental, tangible change
• Most effective setting specific goals prompt
  reviews of behaviour generate community-talk,
  engaging people in locally relevant ideas
• You do influence people by helping
• us to see what we want to do
• Induces goodwill and the experience
• of facilitation
• Enhances authority
• Promotes mobilisation

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Example 1 TEU

• Collected waste from departing students halls
• 7 tonnes of waste was collected from a pool of
  4000 departing students and diverted from
  landfill.
• 3 tonnes of carbon saved
• Goods given a new home - reducing consumption,
  waste and saving students money

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Wider consequences?

• Charity Freshstart
• An estimated 1000 people attended during the
  first three hours of the event
• The engagement team talked to those in the very
  long queue about different programmes and signed
  up people who want to participate in other events
• www.teu.org.uk

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Responsibility Other people

• Other peoples behaviour, and what they should
  and shouldnt do
• eg environmentalists and flying
• If only everyone else would drive less..

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Other people

• We all engage in un/green behaviour
• We are all other people
• Can we expect other people to do things we
  wouldnt be prepared to do ourselves?

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Summary of this lecture The importance of
understanding human behaviour

• Rise of environmentalism
• Environmental explanation
• Interest based explanations
• Post material explanations
• Cultural shifts societal transitions
• Factors that influence the relationship between
  problems and concern

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Summary of this lecture The importance of
understanding human behaviour

• Different strategies to encourage
  environmentalism
• All important because
• Have to understand how policies will be received
  and work
• eg transport planning
• Information, fear or incentives
• Behaviour as interest based? Or culturally
  informed?